Vodafone UK Grows to Total 1.265m Broadband Customers

Vodafone UK has today published their latest Q1 FY24 results, which saw fixed line broadband ISP base grow to total 1.265 million customers (up by 42k in the quarter vs 65k in Q4 FY23), while their mobile base increased to 18.024 million (up by 104k vs 118k in the previous quarter).

The biggest development over the past quarter was the confirmation by Vodafone and Three UK (CK Hutchiso) of their proposed merger agreement (here), which they still expect to close before the end of calendar 2024. But this deal more than most will face a lot of additional scrutiny by regulators, not least due to how it will reduce competition in the market, and so we wouldn’t bank on that 2024 date just yet.

As for their UK fixed broadband base, the operator has continued to report strong growth with the quarterly addition of 42,000 customers – better than many of their bigger rivals. Vodafone supplies consumers via broadband (FTTC and FTTP) connections via Openreach and CityFibre’s respective networks – jointly giving them a reach into 12 million potential UK households via FTTP.

In terms of their mobile base, the operator reported a quarterly reduction of 66,000 Pay Monthly customers (down sharply from an increase of 60,000 last quarter) and a sharp rise of 170,000 in Prepaid / PAYG customers (up sharply from 58,000). In addition, quarterly mobile broadband (data) usage across their UK network increased slightly to 428,072 TeraBytes (up from 416,382 TB last quarter).

Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group CEO, said:

“As we progress our plans to transform Vodafone, we have achieved a better service revenue performance across almost all of our markets. We have delivered particularly strong trading in our Business segment and returned to service revenue growth in Europe.

Looking ahead, we have taken the first steps of our action plan focused on customers, simplicity and growth, but we have much more still to do.”

Finally, the operator saw their quarterly UK service revenue increase to €1,401m (up from €1,319m in the previous quarter). The full report is here (PDF).