Posted: 24th Feb, 2011 By: MarkJ

Mobile operator Orange UK (
Everything Everywhere) has today reported its latest annual financial results to 31st December 2010 (Q4), which revealed
another decline in fixed line internet (Home Broadband) ISP subscribers from 795,000 in Q3 to 770,000 (-25,000) now.
According to Orange this means that their "
plans to turnaround the fixed BB business are also progressing well," with the Q4-2010 results allegedly seeing a "
slow down in the erosion of the fixed broadband customer base." That's despite the fact that they lost fewer home customers between Q2 and Q3 (-21,000).
However Orange has hinted that their recent efforts to better promote the Home Broadband services have seen
renewed sales from Q1-2011, which isn't covered by this report. The company now boldly expects to
return to customer growth in this area from mid-year.
Tom Alexander, CEO of Everything Everywhere, said:
"2010 has been a year of achievement for Everything Everywhere. We continued the rapid integration of the new company, completing a companywide restructuring and maintained good commercial momentum throughout, with improved retention and growth on our contract customer base.
Despite continued regulatory and competitive pressures it has been a strong end to the year with T-Mobile showing a greatly improved performance with its strongest growth for over 2 years. Our continued cost management has allowed us to invest in contract customer growth across both brands.
The strategy for T-Mobile was to focus on costs and profitability, in contrast to Orange’s customer growth strategy; these strategies are now aligned, with a continued focus on costs coupled with a drive to invest in contract customer growth on both brands, as evidenced by the performance in the fourth quarter."
It will certainly be interesting to see whether Orange can make good on its promise and show a positive uptick in Home Broadband subscribers, although the current prediction for customer growth suggests that we'll have to wait until their Q2-2011 results for confirmation.
Orange began 2010 by unceremoniously handing control of its fixed line broadband ISP network over to BT (
here) and ended with a T-Mobile merger to become
Everything Everywhere. As a result much of 2010 has been about merging its networks and operations.
Ideally 2011 needs to be about
future enhancements and service improvements, although so far "
costs" still seem to be the main focus. Orange continues to sit at the bottom (lowest rated) end of most home broadband ISP surveys and that needs to change, otherwise any growth will be short lived.