Coming to America: Vodafone to hit the states as T-Mobile MVNO next year

Mobile operator Vodafone will be coming to America as a T-Mobile MVNO, starting in the late fall of 2015. The wireless service will be focused on enterprise customers in the U.S. Earlier this year, Vodafone sold its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless back to Verizon for the tidy sum of $130 billion. That deal effectively removed Vodafone from the U.S. market, with the exclusion of 400 multinational accounts in the U.S. that Vodafone still continues to service. It also takes care of the wireless service for 500 multinational accounts located outside of the U.S. that have a "strong U.S. presence."

It would be quite ironic for Vodafone to be working with T-Mobile, since the two were competitors when Vodafone owned its stake in Verizon. Overseas, Vodafone and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom are rivals. William Ho, an analyst for 556 Ventures, says that the deal will help both T-Mobile and Vodafone. He says that adding the MVNO will put more enterprise customers on T-Mobile's pipeline, whicvh has been a goal for T-Mobile CEO John Legere.

For Vodafone, the deal will allow it to offer service bundles for its customers, allowing them to roam across the 27 countries where the carrier operates. According to Ho, Vodafone selected T-Mobile due to its lower-cost pricing structure. And next year, T-Mobile will have finished the build-out of its LTE pipeline, reaching 300 million POPs.