Vodafone UK Home Broadband Growth Surges to 751000 Users UPDATE
Mobile giant and broadband ISP Vodafone UK has published their latest results to the end of March 2020 (financial Q4 19/20), which saw them reach a total of 751,000 fixed broadband customers (up by +64K in the quarter vs +20K previous quarter). Meanwhile Mobile customers hit 18,042,000 (down by -14K vs +250K previous quarter)
At present it’s difficult to draw too many conclusions from Vodafone’s last quarter, which is due to the unprecedented impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), although it would appear as if their cheap home fixed broadband packages (FTTC and FTTH) have attracted a surge in take-up during the first calendar quarter of 2020. Despite this the growth in their mobile division has ground to a halt (more on that later).
Otherwise the other main developments for Vodafone UK during the quarter stemmed from their £1bn Shared Rural Network agreement with rivals (here) and the decision to extend new “unlimited data” allowances to their dedicated Mobile Broadband plans (here).
Meanwhile the operator saw their fixed service revenues increase by just 1.7% (Q3: 0.5%, Q4: 3.7%) , although we suspect that most of the new fixed broadband customers they added came from their Openreach (BT) based FTTC (VDSL2) packages. Sadly no details are provided to show how many customers may have joined via Cityfibre’s newer and faster FTTH broadband network, but that will be having a growing impact.
In terms of Vodafone’s mobile customers, it’s noted that +51,000 were added in the latest quarter from contract customers (vs 134,000 in the previous quarter), while prepaid (PAYG) customers declined by -65,000 (vs +116,000 in the previous quarter).
Nick Read, Group CEO, said:
“Vodafone has delivered a good financial performance – growing revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow – whilst building strong commercial momentum through the year and executing at pace on our strategic priorities.
We have also continued to invest in our fixed and mobile Gigabit network infrastructure and digital services, to provide faster speeds for our customers, as well as successfully managing the recent surges in demand. The services Vodafone provides are more important than ever and we are committed to playing a key role in society’s recovery to the ‘new normal’.
I am pleased with the rapid, comprehensive and coordinated way we responded to the COVID-19 crisis. I want to give my personal thanks to the entire Vodafone team, who through their dedication, expertise and professionalism, have kept families, friends and communities connected, enabled students to continue their education, helped businesses operate and proactively supported governments to deliver critical services.”
Otherwise Vodafone’s overall UK service revenue for the quarter hit €1,287m (up slightly from €1,282m in the previous quarter). The full report is here (PDF). Meanwhile we’re still waiting to see whether or not Vodafone reacts to O2’s recent agreement to merge with Virgin Media in the UK.
UPDATE 13th May 2020
Vodafone’s CEO, Nick Read, appears to have put pay to any idea of lodging a counter-bid to the O2 and Virgin Media merger. According to Nick, they’re “very pleased” with their “organic strategy” of just taking wholesale from Cityfibre and Openreach, while also leaving Pay TV to the OTT (Netflix etc.) market.
Time will tell whether that is the right call, but clearly BT + EE and Virgin Media + O2 have an opposing view. On the other hand many consumers do generally seem to prefer to keep their mobile contracts separate from TV, fixed line broadband and phone.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Voda have spent a lot of money on advertising BB lately and they seem to be steadily building a customer base. The only negative thing is they are not an exciting brand right now and being a bit shown up by the Quad Play offering that BT/EE (and soon) o2/VM have.
I do wonder if their going to end up cutting costs to keep customers. My guess is their worldwide operations are going to become more strategic for them than the UK.
I’m sick and tired of talking to people in other countries why can’t we get British people so we can talk and sort the problems out all they do is just messing about
@MrPaulWorthy – Because in other countries people are paid pitance or employed on terms that would be considered slave labour in the United Kingdom, so Vodafone can pay another company less to host support than setting up or paying a UK based support firm…. and if people want to pay cheap for broadband this is how it will stay.
Been with Vodafone for just over 18 months. Was on Superfast1, upgraded to Superfast2 for a £1 cheaper than what a renewal of Superfast1 would have cost!
Great service. Loving the 18mbps upload speeds. Download is around 65 to 71mbps.
I am not surprised… I signed up with Vodafone for mobile (due to a company promotion to get £96 cashback) and last week I had an SMS, email, letter and a phone call trying to sell me Broadband, but as they cannot match Virgin I have no interest.
Their broadband service seems to be better than their mobile service. As far as pricing for products on the Openreach network (FTTC) goes they actually give a better price in most cases for the same speed. And customers stuck on ADSL get a further speed guarantee discount as well. Renewals, as someone else has mentioned, are also often at a BETTER price than new customers, unlike for instance with BT, Sky etc. You actually get rewarded for commitment.
Whilst their Gigafast pricing seems superb relative to the competition for FTTP, the CityFibre rollout isn’t as widespread yet. What will be interesting is if Vodafone will offer FTTP on the Openreach network. And WHEN.
Thus far, I have been told that this is “coming soon” since December last year. I am sure Vodafone would see a surge in custom from FTTP Openreach areas if they were to offer a Fibre product at prices similar to Gigafast which surely they’d do to keep their product offering simple (already their FTTC Openreach is cheaper than BT). Even BT had to price FTTP Ultrafast 900 at around £59. If Vodafone offer it for around £40 (the special offer price for Gigafast a few months back), we’d have some genuine competition.
Its happening, trials are starting in the next few months for customers in Birmingham and Liverpool. Those on the trial will get it free for a year while they evaluate how to proposition the product using Openreach’s network. But yes you’re right price wise it will be reflective of what Gigafast is right now.
Where did you hear that Juniper?