Vodafone UK Grow Home Broadband Users to 137,000 and Trials TV Service

Vodafone has posted their latest results to 30th June 2016 (Q2 calendar), which shows that they added +28,000 new fixed line broadband customers in the quarter to total 137,000 (up from the +20k added in Q1 and +14k in Q4 2015) and improved their UK outdoor 4G cover to 95% (Ofcom’s definition).

The fact that Vodafone has demonstrated another consecutive quarter of good fixed line growth represents very good news for the provider, particularly given that the figures for Q2 2016 are usually subdued by contract cancellations as students return home for the summer (it’s likely that Vodafone’s mobile centric user-base doesn’t appeal as strongly to that demographic).

Otherwise most of the operator’s major developments during Q2 have been centred on their mobile business, except for launching a new fixed line broadband service for smaller businesses (here), and not all of them are positive.

For example, Ofcom recently reported that Vodafone had received the most complaints for Pay Monthly Mobile services (here) and the regulator has even challenged their handling of consumer complaints (here). On the other hand, Vodafone has launched a new product to help tackle indoor mobile notspots (here), as well as a mobile phone replacement service (here) and trials of new portable mini base-station radio units to further boost 4G coverage (here).

However it’s frustrating to find that today’s update doesn’t provide much in the way of new details on their Pay TV (IPTV) service, which is still expected to launch by around the end of 2016. We do however learn that “field trials for Vodafone TV are underway,” but that’s your lot.

Vittorio Colao, Group CEO, said:

“We continued to make good progress during the first quarter. In Europe, our growth remains stable despite regulatory pressure on roaming revenue, with good performance in Germany, Spain and Italy while we are focussed on improving our performance in the UK.

Our growth momentum in AMAP remains strong, with excellent performance in South Africa, Turkey and Egypt and ongoing recovery in India. Customers in multiple markets are attracted by our ‘more-for-more’ commercial offerings of larger data bundles and extra services, while we are seeing continued success with our fixed broadband and enterprise strategies.”

The operator’s main focus is clearly still very much on their core mobile business, which only added 0.5 million new 4G subscribers in the quarter to total 7.5 million (down sharply from the +1.3 million added in Q1 2016); this rises to 17,974,000 when you add in all mobile subscribers and that’s also sharply down from 18,197,000 in the previous quarter.

On the financial front Vodafone delivered quarterly UK revenue of £1,758m (down from £1,903m in the previous quarter). Not the best quarter for Vodafone UK.

Vodafone Group Results to 30th June 2016
http://otp.investis.com/clients/uk/vodafone3/..