Vodafone UK Sees Fixed Broadband Grow to 838,000 Customers

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Vodafone UK have published their latest results to the end of September 2020 (financial Q2 FY21), which saw their fixed broadband base top 838,000 customers (up by +45k in the quarter vs +42K in the previous quarter), while their mobile base declined to 17,380,000 (down by -200k).

As usual there have been a number of important developments over the past few months, such as Vodafone moving to test uCPE kit (here) and rollout OpenRAN across rural England and Wales (here). On top of that the operator has reduced the mobile discount for their “gigafast broadband” customers from £5 to £3 (here), conducted a big price hike (here) and launched a second line service for their home broadband subscribers (here).

Furthermore, Vodafone has also introduced their first set of Openreach powered FTTP broadband products (here) and, separately, was recently named the fastest 5G mobile broadband provider for London by umlaut (here). Finally, the operator is still dragging their feet over joining Ofcom’s system of Automatic Compensation (here).

Otherwise it’s noted that, out of Vodafone UK’s fixed broadband customer base of 838,000, some 437,000 of those are “converged” (i.e. they take a mobile plan from the same operator). Speaking of mobile, the operator’s Pay Monthly base continues to grow, thus pretty much all of this quarter’s decline can be traced back to their pre-paid (PAYG) base.

Nick Read, Group CEO, said:

“Today’s results underline increased confidence in our full year outlook. We are reporting a resilient first half performance and we continue to see good commercial momentum across the Group. The results demonstrate the success of our strategic priorities to date, namely increasing customer loyalty, growing our fixed broadband base, driving digitisation to simplify the company and capture significant cost savings, and deliver 5G efficiently through network sharing.

COVID 19 and the reduction in roaming revenues, through the significant reduction in international travel, is currently obscuring our underlying commercial progress, with Q2 service revenue growing by 1.5% excluding roaming. We are now two years into our longer term strategy to transform Vodafone into a business that enables a digital society, generating both sustainable growth and attractive returns. We are executing at pace, but there remains more to be done to achieve our goals.

Now, more than ever, the connectivity services we provide are critical for society and the demand is growing for our services. I am proud of how our dedicated employees have worked tirelessly around the clock to keep everyone connected.”

Overall, the operator saw their quarterly UK service revenue increase to €1,208m (up from €1,193m in the previous quarter). The full report is here (PDF).