EE UK Sees Home Broadband Surge to 775000 Users and 4G Tops 4.2m

Mobile and Internet provider EE UK has reported that their fixed line home broadband ISP subscribers grew by an impressive +30k in Q2-2014 (calendar) to total 775,000 customers, which is up from the +19k added during Q1-2014 and also better than the +12k in Q4-2013. Meanwhile their 4G (LTE) users grew +1.3m in the quarter to top 4.183m (way up from the +889k added in Q1).

The strong fixed line broadband growth, which is now well within the sort of figures that we’d expect to see from one of the markets largest players, is perhaps at least partly a reflection of the recent effort to re-launch their packages. In early June 2014 EE scrapped their -£10 discount for mobile customers and instead introduced lower prices for everybody else, while also adding other benefits like ‘2 for 1 cinema tickets’ and the ‘2 for 1 pizza express’ promotion to the service (here).

Curiously EE’s latest financial results still point the finger at this growth being “driven by attractive combined fixed/mobile promotions“, thus we might have to wait until Q3 to see if the new deals can hold their own. EE also noted that their fixed line revenues were up +19.6% year-on-year. At the same time their ancient base of dialup customers declined again from 4,000 to 2,000 in the latest quarter, but that’s really nothing to worry about.

Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE, said:

“Today’s results demonstrate that consumers and businesses are responding to our strategy to provide the UK’s biggest, fastest and most reliable network. We are delivering on our goals to rapidly transition our pay monthly customer base to 4G, generate significant merger cost savings and improve our EBITDA margin performance.”

Elsewhere EE reported a quarterly turnover of £1,566m (up from £1,548m in Q1-2013) and stable operating revenue of £1,505m. On top of all that EE’s “superfast” 4G services now cover 73% of the UK population in 229 towns and cities and 2,588 rural villages, and they’ve also announced plans to extend their “double speed” 4G to a total of 40 cities by the end of 2014.

One small downside though is that their new 300Mbps 4G LTE-Advanced service, which is currently being trialled in London, won’t now make its commercial launch until 2015. However customers can still expect the trial to be extended into more parts of London, with Birmingham and Manchester to follow (here).