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Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis, says: “There’s a real question mark about where Vodafone adds value here, or does it detract value? The very essence of why Vodafone exists has to be called into question now.”

She added “People have been burned. There have been many promises of a turnaround, but it just didn’t come to fruition.”

“The concern here is this sounds a lot like another one of Nick Read’s promises,” says Egan. “It needs to sound like there’s more conviction and more urgency behind it.”

“Keeping the whole group together suits them,” says Egan. “I think that the likelihood of any of the individual markets being sold off to private equity will not appeal to e& but may be in the best interests of shareholders.”

“It’s sufficiently differentiated relative to the series of plans that the former CEO had in place. It is somewhat more aggressive and there is more recognition of the failings of the previous approach, so there is hope,” said Karen Egan, an analyst at Enders Analysis. But she added: “We have had many false dawns in Germany — as well as Italy and Spain — so a new promise to turn things around is going to be met with a degree of scepticism.”

Joseph Teasdale, head of tech on Enders Analysis’ media team, told Press Gazette the problem was “Vice never figured out a model at all”.

“Vice had a pitch – we know how to engage young people – but they never found a way to turn that pitch into a business,” Teasdale said.

“They tried digital advertising, sponsored content, creative agency work, TV production, but continually missed revenue targets and never hit sustained profitability.”

Teasdale added that Vice, in common with Buzfeed, had believed that their online content businesses would scale in a manner similar to the software and platform successes of the last decade.