UPDATE ISP O2 UK Sees Home Broadband Subscribers Fall to 560100

Mobile operator and ISP O2 UK (BE Broadband) has suffered another painful quarter after their latest results for Q4-2012 showed that its fixed line home broadband subscriber base had fallen by -19,400 in the quarter to reach a new total of 560,100 customers. Meanwhile rumours of a sale to BSkyB continue to persist.

The recent fall follows a generally frustrating performance for O2’s home broadband platform in 2012, which was fuelled by continued concern over price, poor network performance (routing problems) and the on-going lack of superfast broadband. Recent concern about network congestion (here), GoldenEye’s piracy letters (here) and efforts to disconnect heavy users also haven’t helped (here).

History of O2s Fixed Line Broadband Decline
December 2010 – 671,600 (largest peak)
March 2011 – 669,200
June 2011 – 652,900
September 2011 – 625,300
December 2011 – 620,300 (-5,000)
March 2012 – 617,800 (-2,500)
June 2012 – 602,000 (-15,800)
September 2012 – 579,500 (-22,500)
December 2012 – 560,100 (-19,400)

But the bad news often overshadows the providers other merits, such as the fact that it usually has proportionally more satisfied customers than most of the other big ISPs. Similarly O2/BE’s fixed line phone business once again saw its subscribers increase to 377,400 (up +14,600 in the quarter, although this is less than the +24k added in Q3-2012).

O2 (Telefonica UK) Statement

Revenue trend has improved quarter by quarter since the fourth quarter of 2011 from -6.8% year-on-year to -3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2012 to total 7,042 million euros in 2012 (-5.0% year-on-year), on the back of solid mobile service revenues, resulting in a sequential improvement ex-regulation year-on-year (+0.5% in the fourth quarter).

OIBDA totalled 1,601 million euros in 2012, with a sequential improvement in the fourth quarter. CapEx stood at 748 million euros in the year to December 2012 as the Company continued to focus on increasing its 3G coverage and capacity, resulting in O2 UK having the least complained about network.

O2 (BE) now finds itself in a difficult position. On the one hand it needs to invest heavily in their forthcoming 4G based Mobile Broadband products, while on the other they’ve been left trailing the rest of the market due to a lack of superfast broadband services and no TV solution (not that TV itself is a requirement but it has become more important to the big operators).

The good news is that they do plan to make an announcement about their superfast/FTTC strategy in the summer. The bad news is that instead of leading the pack, much as they did with ADSL2+ some years back, they’re now already a year behind most of their main rivals and will be even further behind come the summer. The focus is clearly on 3G and 4G.

Meanwhile a number of normally reliable sources have this week continued to fuel on-going rumours, which first sprang up during January (here), that O2 and BSkyB have allegedly held discussions concerning the future of the operators Home Broadband platform.

The supposed deal, which could complete around summer 2013 (after the migration to the new BE/O2 converged core network), would involve BSkyB “managing the existing platform“. As usual neither BSkyB nor O2 were willing to comment. Take with a big pinch of salt.

UPDATE 1:01pm

Our sources indicate that O2 are planning another advertising campaign to help push their struggling Home Broadband services, which will hit in April 2013. At this stage we don’t yet know whether the ISP intends to push a new product or to merely promote its existing service.