Vodafone Group said that it will incur integration costs of around £500 million related to its acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide by March 2016.

In a statement, it said that “the global enterprise market offers attractive growth opportunities and remains a key strategic priority for Vodafone”.

According to the company, its immediate goal is to stabilise the CWW business, with full integration expected by March 2016.

It said that it expects to benefit from “clearly quantifiable cost savings and network integration benefits”.

Reuters reports that Nick Jeffery, chief executive of CWW, said that a downward revenue trend at the business would continue until 2014, noting: “It just takes a long time for this ship to turn around.” It also noted declines for the company’s legacy products, coupled with an under-investment in new services.

Vodafone said the combination is expected to deliver “cash flow synergies” of £150 million to £200 million per year over the period to 2016, resulting in free operating cash flow for the Group of £250 million to £300 million from the acquisition in that year.

“We are seeing a number of trends in the enterprise market which play to our strengths – including the increasing focus on employee mobility, the move toward converged services, companies’ desire to manage costs and consolidate supplier bases, system automation and an increasing focus on security”, it observed.

In the last full year, Vodafone’s existing enterprise business contributed 24 percent of its group total, with service revenue growth of 2.2 percent.

Vodafone reiterated that the acquisition of CWW and combination with Vodafone UK has created the country’s “only integrated fixed/mobile player”, at a time when the enterprise communications market is shifting towards converged services.

CWW also has “extensive international network assets”.