Orange UK Home Broadband ISP Subscribers Remain Static at 713000

Orange UK (Everything Everywhere) recently reported its latest financial results to 31st March 2012 (Q1), which revealed that their total base of fixed line Home Broadband subscribers has remained static (no growth or decline), for a third consecutive quarter, at 713,000.

The results themselves were actually posted on 2nd May 2012, although quite a few people (ourselves included) seem to have missed this because they were tucked away under Everything Everywhere’s financial section. But there’s a reason for that (explained below) and it has to do with an accounting change.

History of Orange’s UK Home Broadband Decline
Q3-2007 1,142,000 (Highest Point)
Q3-2010 795,000 (-347,000)
Q4-2010 770,000 (-25,000)
Q1-2011 726,000 (-44,000)
Q2-2011 716,000 (-10,000)
Q3-2011 713,000 (-3,000)
Q4-2011 713,000 (0)
Q1-2012 713,000 (0)

It’s unusual for any fixed line broadband ISP to show zero change for such a long period of time, especially after all the effort that Orange has put into promoting their packages. But crucially both Orange UK and T-Mobile (EE) have “revised the accounting treatment” as part of their business integration process, which means that we might have to wait until Q2-2012 to see what’s really changed.

Elsewhere the report also notes that EE has “achieved double digit fixed broadband revenue growth yoy with 90% of new customers in Q1 taking fixed broadband, line rental and mobile“. Unfortunately EE doesn’t provide the needed financial data for fixed broadband services, which makes this statement hard to examine. Some cost savings have undoubtedly occurred as a result of Orange’s migration of its fixed broadband customers from their old legacy network and on to BT’s platform, which lowered operating costs.

Olaf Swantee, CEO of Everything Everywhere, commented:

“We are seeing improved underlying service revenues, driven by rapid data revenue growth, as we successfully upgrade customers to smartphones and higher value postpaid agreements. We continue to make major strides improving our current network experience such as better signal sharing and faster 3G data services, and we plan to start to introduce 4G LTE for the benefit of UK consumers and businesses by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval.”

On the bright side Orange UK haven’t lost anymore fixed home broadband customers, although it’s clear that the merged group is now placing its primary focus on mobile. EE recently completed the nationwide rollout of 3.5G (HSPA +21Mbps) Mobile Broadband services and are now looking towards 4G products, which are still subject to Ofcom’s somewhat controversial and delayed proposal to free the 1800MHz spectrum for use by related services.