Paul-Gerhard Itjeshorst, What will the partnership mean for Tango as a brand ?

“Vodafone has a well-structured system in place when it comes to partnerships and branding. We have different levels of engagement in branding, from a light product branding to a full leveraging of the Vodafone brand. It depends on what the partners see as appropriate for their market. In this market, Tango will be the dominant brand, with Vodafone appearing simultaneously for partnership products: when Vodafone products are offered through Tango. It is up to the partner to decide how much exposure for Vodafone there is in their market. Here, Tango will remain Tango.

How will this differ from the last partnership Vodafone had in Luxembourg?

“First of all, through our existing relationship with Belgacom, we are able to leverage more synergies when it comes to internal efficiency. The other point is that Tango is the challenger to the incumbent mobile network operator: if you look into the Vodafone footprint, where we are present, in many cases we are a challenger ourselves. In that regard there are a lot of common ideas and approaches to certain issues which we share because of our challenger mentality.

What will the end result be in terms of communication with customers?

“I personally believe this will make a visible difference to the end user in terms of our initiatives in appearing jointly: the Tango and Vodafone brands together. For us, this is a big asset because Luxembourg is surrounded by markets in which Vodafone is present. We are still being regulated but there is lots of differentiation potential. We can communicate with customers in a consistent way especially regarding roaming, for example. It is always communicated to the customer which operator is the Vodafone partner in any given territory across the Vodafone footprint. In this way, we can provide more benefits to Luxembourg partner customers than we were able to in the past.

While the LuxGSM partnership had a fixed duration, would you say there was dissatisfaction from both sides at the end?

“No, not at all. We will continue to be business partners and continue to work with each other on a roaming level but, as always when a contract comes to an end, you have to have a discussion where each party has to analyse available options. For us it was a natural decision to build on our already strong relationship with Belgacom and extend it to Luxembourg. It was straightforward from our point of view.

How long will it be until Vodafone partnership services are up and running for Tango customers, and what of the future?

“We have only just announced the partnership and these things do not happen overnight. There is work to do in the background. But we hope to have things up and running once Tango discuss which Vodafone services they will avail of. In the partnership concept that Vodafone offers there is a certain amount of building blocks. In principle they are all available to our partners. Vodafone creates new propositions all the time and partners can decide whether they fit into the local context. Tango are the experts for the Luxembourg market. We are not. Tango will adopt what strategies it sees as appropriate on an ongoing basis.”