Good Growth Pushes EE to 884000 Home Broadband Users as 4G Hits 9.3M

The impending acquisition of EE by BT isn’t putting a dampener on the operators growth, with their latest Q1-2015 results showing a +50k increase in fixed line home broadband subscribers to total 884,000 (the best growth yet; up from +41k in Q4 2014, +18k in Q3-2014 and +30k in Q2-2014). Meanwhile 4G coverage and uptake is also booming.

The operators 4G (LTE) subscriber base also grew by +1.7 million in the quarter to total 9.3 million, which is a big improvement from the +1.4 million added in the previous quarter. Some 96% of new connections are now taking 4G, with nearly 50% on their exclusive double-speed 4GEE Extra service.

As a result of this EE is on-track to reach its target of 14 million 4G customers the end of this year. Overall 4G population coverage now sits at 87%, while their double-speed 4G network has expanded to 67% of the population. Lest we not forget that EE are, like other operators, also working towards 99% 4G population and 90% geographic voice coverage by 2017 (note: geographic data coverage is also required to hit 85%).

Meanwhile EE’s home broadband revenue was up +15% year-on-year, which the operator said had been “driven by effective cross-selling and early success of EETV“, although the results do not appear to offer any supporting figures and BT has previously indicated that they would seek to impose their own TV solution instead of keep the EETV setup.

Neal Milsom, CFO of EE, said:

“We are delivering strong, consistent commercial performance by giving our customers the best mobile voice and data network experience in the UK. As much of the UK market now has smartphones, we are leading the charge into new growth areas by cross-selling our innovative range of connected products including 4G tablets, 4G WiFi, fixed broadband and EETV to our existing customers.”

It’s worth pointing out that EE’s home broadband and mobile growth may have also been given a boost by some of their new promotions, such offering a blockbuster film every week for all customers, for just £1. On top of that the operator’s customers were also given the ability to take a free portable Smartphone charger, although these are currently suffering from some unsurprising stock problems.

On the financial front EE’s quarterly turnover suffered a mild slip to £1,541m in Q1-2015 and their related operating revenue stood at £1,469m, which is perhaps being hit by some of their on-going network investment (this is being used to improve network coverage, boost 4G service speeds, deploy VoLTE and various other things). The operators monthly Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) currently stands at a fairly flat £18.6.