Response to the following problem:
Talking telephone numbers The scale of Vodafone's binge on spending on telecom assets at the turn of the century can still be seen six years later after the mobile phone operator on Tuesday announced major write-downs of goodwill for a third successive year. The £23.5bn write-down in the carrying value of goodwill, flagged earlier this year, is one of the largest corporate write-downs on record. But it is the £101bn purchase of Germany's Mannesmann in 2000 and the Italian operations it partly inherited from the deal, that has caused the problems. Broken down, Vodafone ascribed a write-down value of £19.4bn for its assets in Germany, £3.6bn for its Italian operations and £515m for the assets in Sweden. The latter already had an impairment charge of £475m a year ago, and Vodafone has since sold it to Norway's Telenor Mobile. Vodafone blamed the write-down on the revision of its longer term prospects in the German and Italian markets, which are being hit by tough price competition.