Vodafone UK Surge to 1.55 Million Broadband Users as Mobile Falls to 18.3M
Mobile operator and ISP Vodafone UK has today published their Q3 FY25 financial results, which confirms that their fixed line broadband base grew by a new record to total 1.549 million customers (up by 72k in Q3 vs 50k in Q2). But their mobile base fell again to total 18.3m (down by -174k vs -93k in Q2), due entirely to a fall in their prepaid/PAYG base.
In terms of their UK fixed broadband services, the operator reported a huge surge in growth, with a quarterly addition of 72,000 customers (one of their biggest growth spurts ever) – thanks in part to being widely available across both Openreach’s and CityFibre’s national networks. The provider’s full fibre (FTTP) coverage can now reach a combined total of 18.4 million UK households (up from 17.3m last quarter).
Vodafone also attributed part of their “record” quarterly fixed broadband growth to the introduction of Ofcom’s new One Touch Switching (OTS) system in September 2024, which is designed to make it easier for consumers to change broadband and phone provider. But it remains difficult to know precisely how much of the growth was really due to that, and we also had the Black Friday sales period during this quarter.
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As for their mobile base, Vodafone actually reported a quarterly rise of 1,000 in Pay Monthly customers (vs a decline of -6k in Q2), but there was yet another sharp decrease of -175,000 in Prepaid / PAYG customers (vs -87k in Q2). Finally, quarterly mobile broadband (data) usage across their UK network increased to 643,984 TeraBytes (up from 617,397 TB last quarter).
Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group CEO, said:
“Group service revenue growth accelerated to 5.2% in the third quarter. This was driven by a step-up in the UK and strong performance in Türkiye and Africa, whilst Germany is impacted by the TV law change. We are continuing to invest in the turnaround of our German business and we are starting to see improving customer trends, although conditions have become more challenging in the mobile market.
During the quarter, we completed the sale of Italy for €8 billion and received regulatory approval for Vodafone’s merger with Three in the UK. When the UK merger completes in the next few months, we will have fully executed Vodafone’s reshaping for growth. We are on track to grow in line with our full year guidance for this year, which we reiterate today, and are looking forward to a stronger Vodafone in the years ahead.”
The report provided no new updates on Vodafone’s now fully approved merger with Three UK (here), which is expected to take a few more months before it reaches legal completion. Finally, the operator saw their quarterly UK service revenue reach €1,507m (up from €1,462m 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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’m starting to get the distinct impression that the main networks aren’t interested in the low rent customers i.e. those spending less than £20 a month and are more than happy to see it go to the MVNOs like Lebara. Why would anyone sign up for a 2 year sim only contract with Vodafone when you can sign up for a month rolling contract say with Lebara which is a lot cheaper?
Exactly Big Dave. They must make a fairly decent profit from these MVNOs without the hassle of dealing with customer care issues etc. The price of a SIM Only deal on the likes of Vodafone and EE are absolutely scandalous. It’s like sorting your car insurance quotes from most expensive to cheapest. The difference is staggering.
Exactly. I’m on talkmobile, which is directly owned by Vodafone. 50GB with EU roaming for £8. It’s cheaper than Vodafone directly by a massive margin.
I have only realised last year how much cheaper those operators are compared to Vodafone. Switched to ID mobile with all the usual features for £7/month. Vodafone were charging me £25.
They tried hard to keep me a few years ago when I changed from them sim only to Plusnet sim only. so they must get something out of it. Now with smarty and have been for a few years, better value for what I use. No point in paying for silly amounts of data if I am not going to use it.
i don’t really want to go back to Vodafone to be honest, I have no idea what I am going to do when they grab hold of Three. Vodafone networks stink here, and I can’t see them keeping three networks going.
I certainly will not use them for broadband, even if I did not have an Altnet here.
Well it would be interesting to understands their strategy with VOXI then, and even whether VOXI’s numbers are included in this report/these figures.
I suspect lots of Vodafone’s customers are migrating to VOXI for obvious reasons.
But can’t work out Vodafone’s stateagy with it.
@Mark Smith Voxi is like Smarty in that it doesn’t have call centres, you can only get online help. If you offload the low rent customers and those who are technically capable to resolve most issues themselves then you have less customers on the main network needing fewer call centre staff……
If Voxi had EU Roaming I’d be interested, but they don’t, so they don’t get touched..
Lebara also uses the Vodafone network in the UK and does include EU roaming
Talkmobile does.
The markets didn’t seemed to be non plussed, here:- https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1065626/vodafone-shares-off-6-as-german-woes-mount-1065626.html