Vodafone Top 1.22m UK Broadband Customers and Cuts 11,000 Jobs
Vodafone UK has released their latest Q4 FY23 results, which reveals that their fixed line broadband ISP base grew strongly to total 1.223 million customers (up by 65k in the quarter vs 47k in Q3 FY23), while their mobile base also now totals 17.92 million (up by 118k vs 259k in the previous quarter). But job cuts galore.
The latest results don’t give us much information on their fixed broadband base, other than to confirm a very strong level of growth (adding 65k in a quarter is very good). Vodafone currently supplies consumers via broadband (FTTC and FTTP) products from Openreach and CityFibre’s respective networks. As a result, the operator says their full fibre products can now reach over 11 million households, which they claim is “more than any other provider in the UK” (TalkTalk and Zen Internet are at a similar level).
As for their mobile base, the operator reported a quarterly addition of 60,000 Pay Monthly customers (down from 94,000 last quarter) and a rise of 58,000 in Prepaid / PAYG customers (down sharply from 165,000). In addition, quarterly mobile broadband (data) usage across their UK network actually declined slightly to 416,382 TeraBytes (down from 417,237 TB last quarter).
Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group CEO, said:
“Today I am announcing my plans for Vodafone. Our performance has not been good enough. To consistently deliver, Vodafone must change. My priorities are customers, simplicity and growth. We will simplify our organisation, cutting out complexity to regain our competitiveness. We will reallocate resources to deliver the quality service our customers expect and drive further growth from the unique position of Vodafone Business.”
In terms of the aforementioned “plans” to turn Vodafone around and simplify the business, the group’s “new” CEO set out four essential areas that she “must change“. At present, it’s not clear exactly what this will mean for consumers in the UK, but the operator does plan to cut 11,000 jobs across its business (note: we don’t know how many will go in the UK).
Vodafone’s Four Point Plan for Change
• We will rebalance our organisation to maximise the potential of Vodafone Business, which continues to accelerate growth, has a unique set of capabilities and has a strong position in a large and growing market as organisations digitise.
• In order to win in our consumer markets, we will refocus on the basics and deliver the simple and predictable experience our customers expect.
• We will be a leaner and simpler organisation, to increase our commercial agility and free up resources.
• We will focus our resources on a portfolio of products and geographies that is right-sized for growth and returns over time.
Elsewhere, there was no solid update on the proposed £15bn mega-merger between Vodafone and Three UK (here), which if agreed would see Vodafone owning 51% and CK Hutchison (Three) owning 49% of the combined business. The operator merely said, “there can be no certainty that any transaction will ultimately be agreed,” although a deal is widely expected and it will face plenty of regulatory scrutiny.
Finally, the operator saw their quarterly UK service revenue decrease again to €1,319m (down from €1,327m in the previous quarter). The full report is here (PDF).
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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Spotted that Voxi grew by 134K in the year, doesn’t seem like that much but also, does not seem to have eaten into Vodafones existing customer base either.
DO the mobile customer numbers include MVNO customers, I see data is included. If I’m an ASDA or Lebara user and I included in the 17.9 million?
I would expect so.
I think Vodafone and three uk merging start already.
They haven’t even reached an agreement yet, so no, it hasn’t. Once an agreement is signed, then they’ll have to wait months to get regulatory approval. Only after that can the real business of the merger start, and it will typically then take a long time to be fully realised.
Not yet, I hope it doesn’t happen, I like smarty, but I don’t want anything to do with Vodafone again, so will go else where.
It doesn’t make sense, they have a naff customer service and want to get rid of staff. That will really work well. Useless company
I get asked whether it’s best to go with Three or Vodafone at the moment with the merger hanging over the two companies. The issue is that Three generally have more and better 5G so do you go down that route for the time being, or is it best to just go with Vodafone because if it goes ahead, you will be a customer in any event when Three are swallowed up eventually?
For me personally, Three have better coverage indoors and masts are being planned around me, but Vodafone seem very stalled in comparison. If agreed, i hope they get the best out of both networks, and where Three is good it stays good.
It won’t “stay good”. look at Orange/TMobile when they merged. Absolute mess whilst they merged sites.
It doesn’t matter who you go with. 3 wont be “swallowed” it’s going to be a JV (51/49% owenership). They’ll likely just move people onto a standard set of tariffs after their deal has expired which are part of that JV.
It’ll be glacial in pace, and the fact 3 were looking at O2 before and it got blocked, I can’t see it happening. They can’t scream “unsustainable” to the regulator whilst smashing out huge network growth numbers, I think they’ll see through that.
Go with the best service for your needs today.
The merger may be canned so I wouldn’t waste time worrying about. And if it does go ahead, it may have zero effect on you.
Vodafone’s lack of investment in the network and automation, and substantial technical debt means it’s billions of pounds and years behind competing networks. When much of the network is still rocking over congested single gig backhaul, it’s no wonder 5G rollout is slow as molasses.
You can’t fail to invest in critical business components without consequence. The network is not up to modern standards, and will see it lose customers to competitors offering a faster, better, more reliable service.
Too much badly thought out strategies, and trying to be clever and failing badly.
“In order to win in our consumer markets, we will refocus on the basics and deliver the simple and predictable experience our customers expect.”
I really hope this means an actual 5G rollout we expect, not the pathetic attempt this far.
I hope there’s no merger. Too much consolidation which leads to join loses and less competition for the consumer.
Of course the real reason for mergers is it’s a nice earner for those at the top
I’ve just moved to Vodafone’s FTTP 900mbs package with CityFibre and the latency is just horrible and my gaming is suffering! Typically latency is 30ms/40ms or worse and even though I live in Glasgow, all traffic routes through London, rather than locally. For a premium FTTP product, this is simply unacceptable. It’s a well known and long standing issue and Vodafone claim it’s “load balancing”. Having been enticed to move from Virgin’s Gig1 package with equally horrible latency has been a big mistake. Avoid!