Vodafone is struggling with customer losses. Although the mobile network operator was able to win many new prepaid customers, the number of valuable contract customers declined. It doesn’t look much better in the business with TV customers. But there is also positive news.
Difficult times for Vodafone. The network operator not only has to build a new 5G network with a lot of money , but also currently has to repair flood damage to its own network infrastructure in many parts of Germany . And then there are not only seemingly absurd sales activities , but now also new quarterly figures that really could have been better. Because the loss of valuable customers in the mobile communications business, which began in the first quarter of this year, worsened again between April and June.
VODAFONE LOSES NUMEROUS CONTRACT CUSTOMERS
After a loss of 20,000 contract customers in the first quarter of 2021, there was another minus of 27,000 in the second quarter. That was by far the worst performance in new customer business with contract customers for many years. In return, the number of prepaid customers rose by 148,000, but the average monthly revenue per customer (ARPU) dropped from 12.80 to 12.40 euros.
In total, Vodafone had just under 30.93 million mobile phone customers on the balance sheet date at the end of June. In addition to 18.99 million contract customers, there are also 11.94 million prepaid customers. If you also include M2M cards that use the Internet of Things, there are almost 60 million. In the traditional fixed-line business, the new Vodafone numbers show 10.95 million customers, which corresponds to a quarterly increase of 7,000 connections. Positive: 33,000 new cable internet customers. 8.2 million customers now have such Internet access.
Meanwhile, the trend towards customer losses in the TV business continues. After a minus of 76,000 connections in the first three months of the current year, between April and June another 75,000 TV connections had to be booked out. The total number of TV customers was thus most recently 13.40 million.
AND SO IT WENT FINANCIALLY
The service turnover at Vodafone in Germany in the most recent reporting period was 2.87 billion euros. That was 1.4 percent more than in the second quarter of 2020. In the mobile communications business, service revenue increased by 2.3 percent to 1.25 billion euros, and in the fixed network by 0.6 percent to 1.62 billion euros.
According to the company, 5G can already be used by 25 million people at their main residence in the Vodafone network. By the end of 2021 it should be 30 million. You can read more details about the Vodafone network expansion on our corresponding background page.
