Gent laughs off build 'em up, knock 'em down brigade

Business Profile: Vodafone chief is not much of a gadget freak but believes live! service will catch on

Sir Christopher Gent is clearly fond of The Savoy. The chief executive of Vodafone holds most of the company's big corporate presentations at the London landmark hotel on the Strand. This time he is back to launch their all-singing all-dancing Vodafone live! service. But wearing the trademark pinstripe suit and braces [although they're navy blue this time not the usual scarlet], the mobile phone boss' image remains more conservative banker than entrepreneurial visionary.

He admits he is "not particularly" fussed whether he has the latest gadgets and is the proud owner of a stone-age blue and gold Nokia handset although he does own one of the shiny new Sharp GX10 phones as well. "Someone was trying to persuade me [to use a Blackberry, a handheld e-mailing device] but I don't like e-mails," he says.

The fusty corporate image and lack of dry-ice at the Savoy-launch of Vodafone live! seem a little inappropriate given the subject matter in hand. Vodafone live! is the new service that the mobile phone operator is hoping will freshen up the brand and help give it BMW-status in the wireless world.

Vodafone customers subscribing to live! can take photos on the new handsets and send them to friends as well as download a host of games and choose from new ringtones among other things.

But to judge a book by its cover and label Sir Christopher as a deal-making technophobe would be a little unfair. "It is understandable," he says, conceding that he has the deal-maker label because of Vodafone's acquisitive history, but says that "completely misses the point". Does he find the deals exciting? "Exciting – no. Satisfying, when you manage to achieve them, yes," he says, but adds, "This is not someone who comes to work today saying 'let's do a deal'."

So what about the company's strategy and the new mobile technologies coming to the fore? If he's not a big fan of e-mail, what about text messaging and picture messaging? Sir Christopher says he text messages "all the time". "I much prefer SMS [text messaging]," he says. "I actually prefer to talk but if I can't talk, I'll send an SMS."

"It's so brief – not pages and pages and it hasn't got the curse of e-mail which is the unnecessary 'copying' ... where some people you don't want to respond, respond and then you get a mushrooming of stuff," he says.

His own experience of SMS is, no doubt, partly behind his confidence that Vodafone live! will be a huge success and partly behind his belief the company will manage to increase its key ARPU, or average revenue per user, figures.

"Just watch our ARPU numbers on November 12," he says. "I think this is about us delivering – not about me talking it up."

His experiences also, no doubt, partly inspire his confidence in third generation, or 3G, services which, he believes will start to become a reality from the middle of next year.

"If you came to Newbury [Vodafone's headquarters] right now, we could give you a demonstration of video telephony in the mobile environment. We have the systems up and working but we need dual-mode handsets," he says.

So what exactly are the services that he thinks his customers will want to shell out more for? Will it, as many suspect, be porn? Intimate photographs whizzing over the network perhaps?

While Sir Christopher insists Vodafone takes its social responsibilities seriously, he says: "We don't actually believe that [porn] is going to be a huge revenue spinner."

"That's not to say, as Julian Horn-Smith [Vodafone's chief operating officer] was saying earlier, that there won't be a hormonal drive behind people wanting to take pictures and send them to boyfriends/girlfriends. That will happen ... whether those subjects will be obscene or not, I don't know," he says.

He reckons much of the stuff people will want to send over the network will be everyday images like "sports events" or post-card style snaps.

"A picture or video of my baby son eventually walking would be good," Sir Christopher says."He's still a bottom-shuffler rather than a toddler."

Sir Christopher, who jealously guards his private life, is understandably more guarded these days. He has faced intense criticism over his pay and bonus but also over the company's strategy and its growth prospects. Not that he hasn't given as good as he's got. His dislike of the "build 'em up and knock 'em down syndrome", that he accuses the press of, is well known.

"Life is too CEO-centric," he says. "Yes, I'm the chief executive and therefore the business leader but there are many other people who deserve to get more credit than they do ... that's a bit frustrating."

Mostly, though, he takes the criticism with a pinch of salt. "I have to tell you, if you haven't got a sense of humour, then don't get in the game," he says. "And most of the stuff is stuff you can laugh off."

But it is the criticism of his pay packet, about which he has said "a lot of tosh" has been written, along with the other general Vodafone carping that recently led the company's chairman, Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth, to suggest Vodafone could up anchor and base itself somewhere else.

Is it a possibility? "It won't happen," Sir Christopher says. "You say something illustratively, as [Lord MacLaurin] did, and people interpret it literally."

Doesn't the option of living overseas sound attractive to Sir Christopher? At 54 and with a young family, and with Vodafone's empire-building days largely behind it, it must be tempting to speed up the 'succession planning' process?

Not a bit of it, he says. There are plenty of things Sir Christopher wants to achieve. "We are very ambitious for the business," he says. "We want the brand Vodafone to be so meaningful for our customers as an experience that they never want to leave us and we want it to become the brand to which people aspire to join."

Then there is the battle with Oftel, now in the hands of the Competition Commission, that could well see the UK's mobile phone operators facing hefty regulation and more price caps.

Sir Christopher says some of Oftel's findings "didn't make any sense to us at all". "You can't actually say that competition isn't intense," he says, "And yet, Oftel, in its great wisdom, decided to intervene although it does admit it's more competitive than it used to be ... and it [Oftel] chooses, cheerily, to ignore 3G." So is there a case for tighter regulation in the mobile arena? "No, is the short answer."

Then there is the battle Vodafone is waging with the media group Vivendi Universal for control of the French telecoms group Cegetel. This afternoon [Monday] will see Vivendi in a Paris court trying to win more time to enable it to amass the cash for a counter bid for shares in Cegetel. If Sir Christopher is concerned by this latest twist, he is doing a good job of disguising it. "It [Cegetel] is a good asset and we'd like to have it," he says. "If they [Vivendi] pre-empt, it's not the end of the world but it'd be good to have it."

Evidently, for now, there is still a lot on his plate. "We believe mobile telephony is a fundamentally transforming service ... it changes the way people live," he says. "It's a great business to be engaged in."

SIR CHRISTOPHER GENT VODAFONE'S DEAL MAKER

Position: Chief executive of Vodafone

Pay: £1.2m plus bonuses

Education Archbishop Tenison's School, Oval, London

Career record: Management trainee at NatWest (1967-1971), computer services manager at Schroder (1971-1979), managing director of Baric (1979-1985), managing director of Vodafone (1985 - 1997), appointed chief executive of Vodafone 1997.

Interests: Cricket and golf