Posted: 31st Oct, 2008 By: MarkJ
France Telecom,
Orange UK's parent company, has issued its latest third quarter results to 30th September 2008, which appears to show that efforts aimed at turning the operators broadband fortunes around have had little impact.
Broadband subscribers declined by 40,000 in the quarter from 1.063m to 1.023m, which is at least a marginally slower rate of decline over the second quarters 44,000 drop:
In the United Kingdom, revenue was down 8.5% in the first nine months of 2008 on a comparable basis. The development of this business is marked by the decline in narrowband Internet and portals and by the levelling off of the ADSL broadband customer base. There were a total of 1.023 million ADSL subscribers at 30 September 2008, a decrease of 10.4% compared with 30 September 2007.
ADSL subscriptions sold unbundled from the telephone line were still up strongly, representing 37% of the total number of ADSL subscribers at 30 September 2008 compared with 27% a year earlier, a 10 point improvement in one year.
In addition, revenue from data services was up 16.7%. Growth in
Mobile Broadband services rose sharply: at 30 September 2008, there were a total of 2.883 million mobile broadband customers, compared with 1.551 million at 30 September 2007, almost doubling in one year.
Despite the continued downturn in results it's still worth remembering that
Orange only really launched its latest drive during October. Sadly we won't see improvements from that, if any, until early next year.