Racal’s Vodafone cellular radio service, with 79,000 subscribers, will invest another UKP30m in its network by March 1988 and British Telecom/Securicor’s Cellnet service, with 70,000 subscribers, will spend UKP43m by August 1987 and an additional UKP70m by autumn 1988 amounting to a total of UKP140m over the next 18 months: Cellnet is criticising Vodafone for underestimating its spending requirements and turning to the UK government recently to borrow frequencies assigned to the coming pan-European system instead of spending money on increasing the number of subscribers which can use existing frequencies while Vodafone argues that it is using its equipment, its Ericsson AXE exchanges for example, more cost effectively than its rival.
