Vodafone revealed last night that it is in talks to pay between $3.5 billion (according to some sources) and $4 blillon (according to others) for two phone businesses in Romania and the Czech Republic in a bid to plug a gap in its global mobile network.

Vodafone already owns 20pc of Mobifon, which has 4.9m customers – almost half of the market – making it the number two player in Romania, where less than half the population owns a cellphone.