New figures from Telefónica Deutschland. And really good ones. Because the number of customers in mobile communications has risen sharply, primarily because of the popular O2-Free tariffs. The bitter aftertaste is simply a loss that has increased again.
It was only a few days ago that Vodafone presented new figures for the second quarter just ended. And they were anything but pleasant. Because especially valuable contract customers ran away from the network operator en masse . Now there are also new quarterly figures from Telefónica Deutschland, O2’s parent company. And they are much more gratifying in terms of customer numbers.
MANY NEW CONTRACT CUSTOMERS AT O2
Because between April and June 2021, the number of SIM cards activated by Telefónica Deutschland climbed by 546,000 to 44.97 million. That was the strongest increase in new customers since the third quarter of 2016. As in the previous quarters, the growth in contract tariffs was particularly impressive. Because a strong 374,000 new contract customers show the Telefónica balance sheets for the second quarter of 2021. At the end of June, a total of 24.18 million contract customers were under contract with Telefónica Deutschland. In addition, there are 19.27 million prepaid customers – 91,000 more than at the end of March – and 1.53 million SIM cards that use the Internet of Things.
According to the company, the business with contracts from the O2-Free portfolio is developing positively. It was backed by strong online channels and – to quote – historically low churn rates. In other words: O2 customers, whose contract would actually have expired, either decided of their own free will to stay with the network operator or could be persuaded to extend the contract with discounts on the basic fee that was actually to be paid. The gradual reopening of the O2 shops also had a positive effect on the overall positive development. In a company press release, Telefónica Deutschland describes the performance of partner brands as solid.
However, things did not go quite as well for the German subsidiary of the Spanish telecommunications giant in the fixed-line segment. Here, 10,000 new VDSL connections are faced with the loss of 1,000 broadband connections. At the end of July 2021, Telefónica Deutschland had a total of around 2.25 million broadband connections, of which just under 1.82 million were via VDSL.
ANOTHER LOSS AT TELEFÓNICA GERMANY
In financial terms, Telefónica Deutschland closed the second quarter of the current year with an increase in sales. Sales rose year-on-year by 5.7 percent to 1.89 billion euros. Of this, all 1.69 billion were accounted for by the mobile communications business. The bottom line was that the company posted a loss of 45 million euros between April and June. In the second quarter of 2020 there was only a shortfall of 18 million euros.
This was due, among other things, to increased investments in the network infrastructure. In the second quarter of the current year, Telefónica Deutschland, according to its own information, invested 280 million euros in the expansion of its networks. That was almost 30 million euros more than in the second quarter of 2020. The new 5G network from Telefónica Deutschland is currently broadcasting with around 2,000 antennas in over 80 cities in Germany . The company plans to supply 30 percent of the population with 5G by the end of 2021 . By the end of 2025 at the latest, 5G should be available in the whole of Germany in the Telefónica network.
