Bill Morrow moved to this country earlier this year to become chief executive of Vodafone's UK business. Previously, he was running the company's operation in Japan, perhaps the most mobile-enabled society in the world.

He comes to the UK at a critical time for Vodafone, with the launch of commercial third-generation (3G) mobile services due in time for Christmas. Morrow talked exclusively to Computing about the challenges ahead.

What were your first impressions of the UK market?

When you look at mobile in business, the upside potentially is so large in the UK. There is such a high population density of companies. We want to make sure we can take advantage of that.

When I came in, I looked at the company and looked at the potential for mobility, and the products we offer, and I don't think we have yet tapped into what we are capable of doing.

You can mobilise your entire workforce, not just the traditional roles of sales and repair people. You can link everybody together and integrate their systems.

Vodafone UK has a good foundation; it's very customer-focused. We have to get more product out there, look over the horizon at what's to come so we can get ahead of the game.

How does the UK compare with Japan in its attitude towards mobile services?

Society in Japan is very accepting of new technology; it almost craves new technology. Societal take-up rate is very high. If you ask a typical Westerner they would say their affinity was not as high. But in reality it is.

We've brought in some of the technology that took off in Japan. There are a few sceptics, but when you put it in front of people they like it and they use it.

The trend here is that we can bring in technology to help people recognise that it's OK to blend their professional and personal lives.

Whether you are at home or not, you have your BlackBerry device and can check your diary, and if there's an urgent email you deal with it wherever you are.

Or when you're in the office, the quid pro quo is that there's no reason you can't make a personal phone call or do an online banking transaction. It's accepted in Japan. Technology enables that, and we need to bring that in over here too.

What can you do to change those attitudes in the UK?

It's about taking the first step. One of our customers is a large UK bank that didn't have email in its branches. Their chief executive gave every one of his branch managers a BlackBerry to enhance communication, co-ordination, and all those benefits.

It takes somebody as bold as that to say: I'm doing this because I think it's right and I can see the business case behind it. Then it becomes more competitive and everybody else follows behind. Be willing to jump out there and take the first step.

When you meet your biggest customers in the UK, what do they say their main challenges are?

What they want to see is that we get on and help them with their business. They want to rely on someone to take care of the service, pay a certain fee, say we'll work closely together on our development and plans going forward, and it becomes a partnership that goes beyond the way we have worked in the past.

I'm seeing a lot of that: understand my problem and give me a solution, don't give me the parts.

For a company used to selling mobile products, is that a big culture change?

It certainly is. It's a commitment we have across the group. When I was in Japan, Nissan came to me and said it wanted to leverage off Vodafone. It has manufacturing and distribution plants and dealers and suppliers all around the world, and wants to get them all on the Vodafone network.

We said that we don't have a product today for that, but we know it's something our customers want and we're working on it and are starting to deliver on it.

If you're a multinational, we can do a lot of things to be sure you get the right kind of tariff structure, and there's products we're developing to help things such as virtual private networks. We're in the growth area, but probably a year away from where we know we need to be.

What is the challenge you now face in selling 3G more widely?

I don't think it's a challenge at all. I think there's a growing demand and appetite for further enhancements to people's mobile phones.

Our Vodafone Live! service has been tremendously successful, and we're seeing good spend on content. 3G is going to be an extension of that, but enriching the content and the user experience.

We launched the 3G datacard in April. It's been successful, and we've learned a great deal. For example, what the user's behaviour patterns are for a service such as this, compared with traditional mobile telephony.

As we build our propositions for commercial 3G, we're taking that into account. We believe that consumers trust our brand, and have to make sure that whatever we do with the product lives up to that.

Nobody predicted that simple things such as SMS and ring tones would be such huge successes. What do you think will be the key to 3G take-up?

I don't think there is one silver bullet. Everybody hopes to get some piece of content that becomes the big seller. The way we are looking at it is that we want to change the lifestyle for people, whether at work or home, and give them a better life.

It's about a multitude of different content that will do that. There is not as much risk as people thought in the past; we have much more of a proven model and proven interest, and when we get to 3G it will just improve that whole experience.