Vodafone Top 1.61 Million UK Broadband Customers as Mobile Declines
Mobile network operator and UK ISP Vodafone has today published their Q4 FY25 financial results, which confirms that their fixed line broadband base grew by a healthy 61,000 in the last quarter to total 1.61 million customers (down from 72k added in Q3 2024). But their mobile base fell again to total 18.175m (down by -125k in Q4 vs -174k in Q3).
In terms of their UK fixed broadband services, the operator reported more growth, with a quarterly addition of 61,000 customers (or 227,000 across the whole year) – 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 19.4 million UK households (up from 18.4m last quarter).
As for their mobile base, Vodafone reported a quarterly rise of 41,000 in Pay Monthly customers (vs an increase of 1,000 in Q3), but there was yet another decrease of -166,000 in Prepaid / PAYG customers (vs -175k in Q3). Finally, quarterly mobile broadband (data) usage across their UK network increased to 655,568 TeraBytes (up from 643,984 TB last quarter).
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Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group CEO, said:
“Since I set out my plans to transform Vodafone two years ago, Vodafone has changed. We have reshaped Europe, we are seeing the positive impact of our drive for customer satisfaction in all our markets – most noticeably in the UK and Germany – and we have delivered strong operational improvements across the business. Clearly there is much more to do, but this period of transition has repositioned Vodafone for multi-year growth.
Looking ahead, we expect to see broad-based momentum across Europe and Africa, and for Germany to return to top-line growth during this year. This is reflected in our guidance for profit and cash flow growth for the year ahead.”
Finally, the operator saw their quarterly UK service revenue reach €1,489m (down from €1,507m 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 assume the number of mobile customers does not include those connecting via MVNOs on the Vodafone network. If so that’s no surprise at all, if you’re a sim only customer you get a far better deal from the likes of Lebara etc and you’re probably the kind of low rent customer (like me) that Vodafone ain’t too worried about losing.
Im with Talkmobile Vodafone who owns it and I have been paying for a sim only £9.95 my data only went up from 120GB to 150GB same price snice 2023 no price rise at all.
Happy.
They do normally include MVNOs
You can easily get Vodafone much cheaper though with cashback redemption deals from 3rd parties such as mobiles.co.uk (owned by CPW). I’ve not paid more than £4.50-6pm for 50-120GB data on vodafone for the last few years.
Margherita Della Valle said Vodafone have changed? Mmm, not sure about that from what I hear. It will have to change a lot before I would use them again. Such a shame the merger was allowed to go through, since I am with Smarty.
Still, I agree with Big Dave, people like us, what he calls low renter, Vodafone or other large providers no doubt have no interest in. It is the big data users they will go after.
Maybe if Vodafone’s network quality hadn’t taken a massive nosedive exactly at the point they turned off 3G, they’d not be losing customers. Somehow turning off 3G also resulted in 4G service becoming awful – in areas it had worked brilliantly I often find you get bumped onto 2G now with lovely ‘zippy’ Edge connectivity even though 4G had been perfectly fine previously.
This is not an isolated issue in one area either before the usual suspects chime in.
Come the Three merger the first thing they are likely to give is free roaming on each other’s networks, so this could get worse or better depending where you are.
I left VF for that very reason. Quality of their network is terrible. I could have a 5 bar 4G signal and still not get any service. Also, international roaming broke, could not get a signal in Denmark. Switched to O2 and I’ve not looked back.
Similar observations, to a degree. I’ve been with Vodafone for a fair few years, but this year I am really considering a move. My signal level has dropped significantly lately (three / four bars to one or two). Of course, the quality is what counts and I have noted I am very regularly getting late or no notification of voicemails and sometimes texts lost in the ether. I only use data when I am out of the house, so I can’t comment too much on the data quality. O2 have gained a stonking signal (at roughly the same time as VF dipped), though I don’t know how good they are for data. I have a Scancon all-network SIM for backup data use in certain buildings where all networks struggle, but I rarely use it. However, the difference in signal level is very noticeable. Of course, they are known for having congestion so that’s a piece of the puzzle for any future move.
Exactly this. Had been with vodafone based networks for around 20 years. Then the 3G switch off happened and suddenly places that i had okish signal and could stream a bit of music etc suddenly turned into dead spots where i couldnt even load a simple web page. It got so bad i ended up moving over to Spusu(EE) and coverage is far better and I constantly have 5G which was rare on vodafone (although not that different to 4G atm).
How did the 3G switch off impact 4G so much? was it the amount of devices that jumped across onto 4G to 3G at the same time?
@V
if you have an android phone you might have the option of setting “Allow 2G” to off.
That stops the phone connecting to Edge and stay on a weaker 4G signal.
I find it greatly improves my experince on Lebara.
CEOs like politicians always claim quality has improved by cutting services and in the case of Vodafone asset stripping by selling off Vodafone’s profitable international business for the UK merger with Three.
Not surprising when they are the cheapest big name.
Be glad to migrate away from them for voice when fibre is available.
Ripping off people who’s only choice is a landline.