Vodafone announced its half-year results today. Wait, don’t go, they were interesting.

I’ll spare you the financial details. Ok I can’t resist. Overall there were no big surprises. Organic revenues were down 3% yoy and group EBITDA declined by almost 8%. Full-year guidance was reiterated.

The headlines were uninspiring, but this morning’s results presentation, hosted by Chief Executive Vittorio Colao, threw up a few interesting snippets regarding the company’s operational performance. They provide a useful snapshot of what’s going on at Vodafone, but they also have implications for other players. Hope you like numbers:

• Average price per minute down 10%. Ouch! Definitely some price plan optimization going on there – that’s operator speak for consumers using every last voice minute and text message in their price plan bundles.
• Roaming revenue down 14% – that’s businesses cutting costs during the recession – by happy coincidence Vodafone’s own travel expenses are also down 14%.
• Enterprise revenues down 5% – more cost-cutting. See the trend?
• Fixed broadband up 9% – that’s Vodafone playing catch up with other more established converged service providers like Orange.
• PC connectivity revenues up 21% and consumer mobile Internet revenues up 30% (with a whopping 73% increase in the UK – just wait ‘til Vodafone’s UK customers get the iPhone).
• 30% of Vodafone’s active customers use data services (at least monthly), but only 10% subscribe to a data plan (see the opportunity?)
• 20% of Vodafone’s new handset sales in Europe are Smartphones. It expects this to increase to 30-40% next year (it’s already approximately 40% in the U.S.). Wow – the U.S. leading Europe on a key mobile market metric – stop the presses.
• Here’s one for the engineers among you – only 5% of Vodafone’s cell sites are operating at more than 90% of capacity during busy hours. The company believes HSPA+ will meet its needs for the next 2-3 years. It will also achieve better capital efficiency through cost savings – 55% of new sites in Europe are already shared. So, no rush to LTE then?
• Let’s finish with a big number. Vodafone also announced today that it’s targeting £1bn in additional cost savings by March 2012.

So, what do all these numbers mean? Here’s one interpretation. There’s no voice revenue growth in mature markets (I guess we knew that). Data is where it’s at (knew that too?). The pipes must get fatter and more efficient (Mr Colao’s term – not mine) to cope with future smart-phone-driven data demand. Operators (well, Vodafone anyway) are still operating well under capacity. No data crunch coming? Operators can sell lots more data plans to consumers, which means it will be several years before the data business goes ex-growth – by which time Vittorio will be sipping on something pleasant on a Mediterranean beach. Before then, he’ll take great pleasure in cutting Vodafone’s costs to the bone. That’s what I think the numbers say. What do you think?

The impact of Anywhere–when a single powerful, pervasive digital network can connect all people, at anytime, in any place–will fundamentally change the consumer ecosystem. Communications will offer more intelligent, contextual services that facilitate richer experiences. Consumption of information will change, ridding consumers of information overload and giving them control over when, where and how they access content. And media will also change, releasing consumers from today’s restrictive choices and scheduling.

When Anywhere is fully realized, today’s inflexible models will give way to more personalized media experiences, where user choice and control are paramount. Network builders hold the keys to this revolution. To open their businesses to Anywhere, they must master new service innovation models and pursue alternative monetization strategies.

Earlier this week, I hosted a webinar focused around the Yankee Group Framework Report, “Transforming Anywhere.” I discussed the emergence of access to the Anywhere web, how it’s being driven by consumer behavior and expectations and how the evolution of Anywhere, in turn, is transforming the consumer.

The webinar runs about an hour:  audio (mp3) and slides (pdf).

We’re all economists now.

We’ve learnt painfully that in the world we’ve created almost everything depends on a viable financial system. Before we became economists, we didn’t notice the utter necessity of money flows and lending. So when these dried up we suddenly had a credit-crunch, and the pipes are proving difficult to unblock.

Like cash and credit today, in future almost everything will depend on connectivity. Truly ubiquitous fast broadband is coming. We will use a wide variety of beautiful and beguiling devices to stay connected to everything and everyone. We will use connectivity with the same level of dependency – and occasional recklessness – we used credit cards during the past 15 years. We will get hooked. Like credit, connectivity will enable new businesses to flourish, improve consumers’ lifestyles, and allow governments to achieve major societal improvements. Life will seem wonderful.

But this dependency creates risk. What happens if there’s a crunch? What happens if there is massive failure in the supply of connectivity? I’m not talking here about occasional local network failure or software glitches. I’m talking about the systematic withdrawal on a global basis of the connectivity that will have become our lifeblood.

Surely this can’t happen I hear you say. I hope not, but some of the things I experienced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week have given me cause for concern.

I lost count of the number of demos I struggled through in Barcelona that showed me how network operators will be able to control/restrict/moderate connectivity in future. Horrible antagonistic words are used to describe these solutions – “throttling” has to be the worst – always gets me thinking about baby seals.

From the dismal business of trying to create any meaningful data traffic, it seems that almost overnight the wireless industry has become preoccupied with restricting usage. Customers, we are told, will have to learn to ration their use of the network, or else they will be throttled, or perhaps have their fingernails removed.

I know. I know. Network operators believe they must control usage to guarantee network performance, make some money, and remain viable in the long-run.

Banks are restricting lending today to try to repair their balance sheets. I’m worried network operators will restrict the supply of connectivity in future – on a large scale – for similar reasons.

This raises numerous big questions about ecosystems, open access, regulatory policies, spectrum licensing, nationalizing the networks (surely not?). This is the kind of stuff Yankee Group will be all over during 2009.

Let’s have this debate. But let’s do it in the knowledge that almost total dependence on fast ubiquitous broadband will create a potential connectivity-crunch with massive knock-on effects on economies, businesses, and everyday lives. We have to find a way to prevent our connectivity pipes going the same way as our credit pipes. We can’t blame the banks next time.

I didn’t expect to come out laughing. It also probably wasn’t quite what the presenters intended. But here on day 2 of the Mobile World Congress, the CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world had us in stitches as we emerged blinking into the mid-morning Barcelona sunlight.

Cesar Alierta got it going. Telefonica’s Executive Chairman was discussing the benefits of nurturing entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking mentalities as we struggle to cope with the recession. He instantly made us all feel a whole lot better by explaining that we only need to succeed 65% of the time. This is what he tells his lucky managers at Telefonica. Even with a 35% failure rate they’re on track for success. I’ll be calling my boss later this evening to pass on this pearl of wisdom. Too bad he completed my performance review last week.

Steve Ballmer also cheered us up. We were grateful to hear the Microsoft CEO explain that all this recession and depression stuff is really just an “economic reset”. That’s right – an economic reset. I guess a quick CTRL-ALT-DELETE and RESTART should sort out the credit crunch then. I knew computers were pretty powerful these days, but I had no idea they could do this. Thanks Steve.

Vittorio Colao Chief Executive of Vodafone didn’t let the side down either. “Please don’t call me a carrier” he pleaded. Perhaps I was the only one laughing at that line – I thought it was a joke. There was a serious point in there somewhere. Something about operators operate so they should be called operators, not carriers (confused?). I guess when you make CEO at a company as large as Vodafone, you can ask to be called whatever you want – and get it. It reminds me of the old joke about what do you call a gorilla with a machine gun? – Sir. (Well it was funny when I was 12).

There was also something quite humorous (though again without much intent) in the CEOs tripping over each other to be the first to achieve the utopian state of openness. It went something like this:

“We’re more open than you”. “No we’re more open than you”. “I have an idea – let’s all be open together and then we won’t have to fight about who is truly the most open of us all”.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President & CEO of Nokia was at it. So was Mr Ballmer but he did frequently  -and refreshingly – slip back into “we’re going to kick your ass” mode.

The trouble is (this is the serious bit) they’ll never get this mobile services thing fully open because they’re pushing at the door from both sides. The carriers (sorry, operators) want less OS fragmentation because it’s all getting a touch too confusing for their customers. But almost in the same breath as they make this request they extol the virtues of the iPhone, which – last time I checked – is available from only one carrier in each market – so hardly open according to any reasonable interpretation of the term. Capitalism may not be flavor of the month right now, but let’s give good old open-market competition a chance to whittle the mobile OS range down to a manageable number before we sacrifice that competition in the name of openness – whatever it means.

But this serious stuff was just a brief interlude before we were chortling again as the CEOs discussed something about smart shops replacing dumb pipes, and  app stores opening up at a pace only matched by the speed at which the recession is closing down physical retail stores. Irony is funny right?

But among the laughter there was also real optimism – lots of it. This whole Smartphone thing is really taking off. Demand for anywhere-anytime connectivity is exploding. Consumers want ubiquitous access, faster throughput, and richer services. This industry is finally starting to deliver on what kids want. It’s no longer designing products based on the tastes and desires of predominantly male, 40-something executives in suits. Mobile access to social networking is a great example. We finally get it. Right after I phone my boss about the performance thing, I’ll be straight onto SpaceBook and MyFace to see who’s been poking me. We get it alright.