Vodafone's outsourcing fever

Could a mobile phone operator become a virtual company, outsourcing most functions while holding the network as its core business? Vodafone is certainly pointing the way forward. On October 9th it announced that it was oursourcing some development to IBM and EDS; today it follows up with news on Reuters that it is outsourcing more of the same to Microsoft. Naturally Vodfaone intends to save millions of quids by doing this - but for now at least it's not saying how big those savings might be.