LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Britain's Vodafone plansto spend 7 billion pounds on its networks following the sale ofits U.S. business, ramping up investment after it posted arecord fall in quarterly organic service revenue.
The world's second-largest mobile operator, which agreed adeal in September to sell its U.S. arm to Verizon Communications for $130 billion, said it would spend 7 billion pounds($11.18 billion) by March 2016 to improve its networks in a bidto set it apart from rivals.
The group announced the details of its "Project Spring"spending programme as it reported first half results showing thepressures across the group.
Organic service revenue - its key ongoing revenuemeasurement which strips out the impact of one-off costs such ashandset sales - was down 4.9 percent in the second quarter dueto very weak trading in Europe.
That was worse than the 3.5 percent fall recorded in thefirst quarter and well below the last record fall of 4.2 percentin the fourth quarter.
The investment, which is likely to prompt rivals to respond,is designed to improve network quality across Vodafone'sfootprint, to meet the demand of consumers who want to accessthe internet on the go via smartphones and tablets.