Posted: 22nd Feb, 2012 By: MarkJ

Mobile operator Orange UK (
Everything Everywhere) has reported its latest Q4-2011 financial results, which revealed that they had successfully managed to
stop the bleed of fixed line
Home Broadband subscribers at
713,000 (the same as Q3-2011).
In addition the operator has also successfully
migrated its fixed broadband customers from their old legacy LLU network and on to BT's platform, which has apparently lowered operating costs and not a lot else.
Recent History of Orange's UK Home Broadband Decline
Q3-2007 1,142,000 (Highest Point)
Q3-2010 795,000 (-347,000)
Q4-2010 770,000 (-25,000)
Q1-2011 726,000 (-44,000)
Q2-2011 716,000 (-10,000)
Q3-2011 713,000 (-3,000)
Q4-2011 713,000 (0)
Orange's Home Broadband subs have been falling for years and "
plans to turnaround the fixed BB business" (i.e. envisaged a return to customer growth from mid-2011), which were first announced at the end of 2010 (
here), have often seemed overly optimistic. Suffice to say that Orange
have yet to show any growth but that could now happen when the Q1-2012 results arrive later this spring.
Olaf Swantee, CEO of Everything Everywhere, said:
"Our focus on operational excellence has generated solid performance over the year as we accelerated network and organisational integration to deliver planned cost savings. As a result of network sharing and customer experience improvements, we are seeing good commercial momentum and are capitalising on the smartphone and data opportunity to drive underlying growth."
It's good to see that Orange has finally stemmed its Home Broadband decline, although they're not out of the woods yet. One of the problems is that many people do not perceive Orange as being a provider of Home Broadband services, although recent
marketing efforts have begun to change that perception.
A quick glance at the groups future strategy shows that their goal is "
significantly increasing Smartphone penetration and growing data revenues". Over the next 3 years both Orange and T-Mobile aim to invest more than
£1.5bn to improve network speed, reliability and coverage. Not a word about fixed line services.
Most of the markets most successful ISPs have something that their rivals don't, such as low prices, superfast broadband services, cheap bundles, strong TV products and more. By comparison Orange has price on its side and a less than perfect history in other areas (e.g. support, service quality etc.).
Clearly
more needs to be done. If Orange is to become truly successful again then it will need to step up its game and stop treating home broadband services as an afterthought. The new generation of superfast broadband services and YouView based IPTV solutions might be a good place to start but they'll need to take it seriously, assuming they take it at all.