History
In December 1995, Omnitel Pronto-Italia launched its services in Italy. Omnitel was a mobile operator and Infostrada (today owned by Wind) was a fixed-line operator. They belonged to Olivetti and represented the first telephone alternative to monopolists TIM and Telecom Italia.
Original majority owner Olivetti sold its interest in Omnitel and Infostrada to the German consortium Mannesmann (which had been a minority shareholder since 1997) after Olivetti took control of Telecom Italia, and thus TIM, in 1999. Mannesmann took control of Omnitel with a 53.7% equity stake.
The following year, Vodafone purchased Mannesmann, thus taking control of Omnitel. The Vodafone brand was introduced as Omnitel-Vodafone in 2001, made the primary brand as Vodafone-Omnitel in 2002; finally the current name Vodafone Italia was introduced in 2003, dropping "Omnitel" altogether. Vodafone Italy introduced the new Speechmark Logo only on 10 June 2007.
The company slogan varies from that of the international Vodafone campaign (Make the most of now) and is Life is NOW. The company website was known as 190.it as 190 is the customer care number for Vodafone Italy. Starting from July 2008, the company URL has been changed from "190.it" to "vodafone.it". The company's spokesmodel from 1999 to 2006, for both Omnitel and Vodafone, was Australian model Megan Gale.
Since taking over the company, Vodafone has introduced its suite of services in Italy, such as Vodafone live! and UTMS/HSPDA services, and has collaborated in partnership to launch of Mobile virtual network operators for other corporations.
In 2007, like in Spain, Vodafone Italy has bought the Italian branch of Tele2, renaming later as TeleTu in 2010, adding fixed-line network offers.
Read more about this topic: Vodafone Italy
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