ISP Vodafone UK Grows Fixed Broadband to 793,000 Customers
Mobile and broadband ISP Vodafone UK have published their latest results to the end of June 2020 (financial Q1 FY21), which saw their fixed broadband base grow to total 793,000 customers (up by +42K in the quarter vs +64K in the previous quarter), while their mobile based declined to 17,580,000 (down by -462K).
As usual Vodafone has seen a number of important developments over the past few months, although most of them stem from their mobile network. For example, the operator has deployed a 4G service to its first rural village under the new £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) agreement (here) and they became the first UK operator to deploy “Standalone 5G” technology, albeit only at a single location (here).
Meanwhile the on-going wait for WiFi Calling to gain SMS support has been causing some annoyance (here). Similarly, customers of their home superfast broadband (FTTC) packages have been left confused by the vanishing act of their “Ultimate Speed Guarantee” (here), which Vodafone says hasn’t been removed even though it’s no longer mentioned.
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The other big development has been the operator’s introduction of Vantage Towers as their new tower infrastructure company for Europe (i.e. managing access for over 68,000 towers across 9 markets), which is said to be on-track for IPO in early 2021 (i.e. floating itself on to the stock market). Apparently, Vodafone’s Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited (CTIL) portfolio (network sharing agreement with O2 UK), with 14,300 sites in the UK, may be added with the inclusion of Vodafone’s 50% equity stake in CTIL.
Otherwise this latest quarter covers the period from April to June, which is of course the time-frame most likely to have experienced significant disruption as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. Suffice to say that it’s probably best to take the results this time around with a pinch of salt as they may not be terribly representative.
Nick Read, Group CEO, said:
“Our trading performance in the first quarter demonstrates the relative resilience of our operating model and focused delivery of our strategic priorities. Whilst we have seen the direct impact on our revenue from travel restrictions and business project delays, we have also seen increased usage in voice and data, alongside record NGN broadband customer net additions in Europe.
I am also delighted to introduce Vantage Towers as Europe’s leading tower infrastructure company. A year ago, I set out a three-phase plan for our towers to deliver industrial synergies from network infrastructure sharing, generate operational efficiencies by establishing a dedicated towers management team, and unlock value for our shareholders through the IPO of Vantage Towers, which is firmly on track for early 2021.
The role Vodafone plays in society has never been more important, particularly as the markets in which we operate continue to face challenging conditions. We have executed well in delivering on our social contract to provide fast and reliable connectivity for our customers. We will continue to work collaboratively with governments and policy makers to create the right environment for investment in essential services and ensure our customers receive the best overall experience.”
Overall, the operator saw their service revenue fall to €1,287m (down from €1,287m in the previous quarter). The full report is here (PDF). Some readers have also been asking us about the status of Vodafone’s move to add Openreach’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) services, which are intended to complement their existing work alongside Cityfibre’s FTTH network in various UK cities.
At present ISPreview.co.uk has been informed by Vodafone that they are currently making progress with a “small number of trial users” as they “continue preparations” to launch the new FTTP packages. We hope to have a bigger development to announce in the near future.
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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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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That’s a lot more connections to masts. Hope they’ve got the spectrum to provide the levels of service their home broadband customers expect!
Fixed growth up (but slowing) and mobile connections down.
All mobile operators have capacity, performance and coverage issues. What you experience on a particular mast is so variable affected by Device, RAN and backhaul.
I’m probably one of the lost mobile customers during this quarter. My experience with their network were either that it was slow a lot of the time, or it was showing signal but data wasn’t working, especially during my trips to London.
Much happier now I’ve switched.
Who did you switch to?
EE
Vodafone are currently trialling FTTP with Openreach in Liverpool and Birmingham, its not likely to launch until the back end of this year at the earliest. Most likely a 2021 launch once they have ironed out the order process and integrating that service into their systems.
Desperately waiting for that to come to fruition – BT too expensive.
Having just switched from Vodafone to BT for FTTP, I wouldn’t be surprised if they launch nationwide about a week after my cooling off period.
“the operator saw their service revenue fall to €1,287m (down from €1,287m in the previous quarter)”
??
Currently having a ‘mare with a brand new Gigagast (CityFibre) installation. Constantly dropping PPP connection to router and extremely poor throughput. CS have been on the ball and great thus far, hopefully the network side work out the issue and resolve it, or I’ll be cancelling within the cooling off period!
Vodafone need to step up their game to offer FTTP via Openreach (as do other ISPs).
The amount of customers is still quite low to be honest and it doesn’t surprise me. I tried signing up to Vodafone in January for FTTC and spent several hours because I was attracted by the £100 USwitch/MoneySuperMarket offer and the cheap £23 per month offer at that time.
Unfortunately there appears to be a serious defect with Vodafone’s signing up site. “We’re sorry, but we can’t place your order at this time.”
“We were unable to verify your identity, but if you believe this is an error, please try to checkout again and amend your details.”
After further attempts I then received this. “Regrettably, your order was unsuccessful”
“Your order has not been placed and no payment has been taken because your credit check failed. Learn more about our credit check process.”
I posted my topic on thinkbroadband Vodafone sub forums and quite a few other people had the same problem as me. It was a very frustrating experience.
The credit check failed with my account, my mum and my dad. All 3 of us tried signing up during a period of 2-3 weeks and we failed despite having clean credit check history.
Contacting Vodafone live support chat told me that if I make a phone call then I can sign up via phone or via live support chat. But this is futile because you then won’t get the £100 voucher!
So in the end we gave up with Vodafone and joined TalkTalk instead a month later in February and no credit check failure with TalkTalk.
If Vodafone want to see their subscribers increase rapidly they need to sort out their website, it is broken and they are losing potential customers because of this!
When you look at Trustpilot Vodafone broadband get’s slated, I’m with them for mobile[s] but I wouldn’t touch them for the Internet.
I’ve got a sim only deal with them, data signal isn’t bad. Who are you with for internet?
I’ve been with them before, their evening speeds were appalling, I don’t think BT gave them much capacity, I moved to BT, yes expensive but you get what you pay for.
I’m with cable Virgin Media no tv just home phone and 100 meg broadband
As a Vodafone Customer I have no problem with Vodafone’s FTTC Broadband Service the reason why customers moan it’s the lack of understanding. It’s not only Vodafone who have customers that moan it’s BT EE TalkTalk Virgin Media and others. But I must admit there is a lack of understanding from Customer Service. Like for example I use my equipment Router and Modem because all ISPs gives you cheap and rubbish equipment.
If I left Virgin I would go with Zen they have a price promise that the price you start of with is the price you will always pay so no increase sounds good to me.I know the speed I would get from Zen would be over 50meg but that would be ok for us.
@MJ
“…fixed broadband base grow to total 793,000 customers (up by +42K in the quarter vs +64K in the previous quarter), while their mobile based declined to 17,580,000 (down by -462K).”
Their report, page 5 (https://investors.vodafone.com/sites/vodafone-ir/files/result_document/Q1-fy21/Vodafone_Q1_FY21_Trading_Update_Report.pdf) actually said they had 74k bb net adds and 61k mobile net adds.
Can you please comment on this?