Verizon Wireless and Vodafone Cooperate on Transatlantic Text Messaging Service for Customers

BEDMINSTER, NJ — Verizon Wireless, the leading U.S. wireless service provider, and Vodafone, the world's largest mobile community, today announces that they are introducing transatlantic text messaging. This collaboration will enable their respective customers to send and receive text messages between the Verizon Wireless CDMA network and Vodafone's GSM networks.

The transatlantic text messaging services will be introduced on a phased basis in the U.S. and 10 of Vodafone's GSM networks. All Verizon Wireless customers with TXT messaging-capable handsets, and Vodafone customers across Germany, Greece, Ireland*, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK, will be able to use the service beginning in early 2004. Vodafone intends to extend the service to an even wider footprint during 2004.

Each text message sent travels between GSM and CDMA networks and is converted by InphoMatch, a U.S. vendor, before being forwarded to the recipient' s handset. Testing of the process shows that the conversion process and message delivery occurs within seconds.

John Stratton, VP and chief marketing officer at Verizon Wireless, noted, "Vodafone and Verizon Wireless are helping to make the world a little smaller as we mobilize our strengths to provide transatlantic text messaging."

"The existing collaboration between Verizon Wireless and Vodafone continues to flourish and is now moving into new areas. The introduction of this new era of transatlantic text messaging services is a clear indication to our customers that, as well as introducing innovative new global multimedia services, we continue to improve our existing service offerings," said Peter Bamford, Chief Marketing Officer, Vodafone.

* Vodafone Ireland has already initiated a pre-Christmas marketing campaign for the service.

About Vodafone
Vodafone is the world's largest mobile community with over 125m proportionate customers worldwide and equity interests in 26 countries and Partner Networks in a further 10 countries. www.vodafone.com  

About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless is the leading provider of wireless communications in the U.S. The company has the largest nationwide wireless voice and data network and 36 million customers. Headquartered in Bedminster, NJ, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). Find more information on the Web at www.verizonwireless.com.

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