Vodafone's struggles in the UK have continued with the news that revenues fell nearly five per cent during the last quarter.
The company's latest financial results showed that total revenue fell 3.6 per cent to €11.8 billion, with the UK seeing a 4.8 per cent drop during its third quarter.
Enterprise revenues also fell across the company's mobile arm, with a 5.2 per cent drop in mobile service revenue blamed on the fallout from handset financing, although Vodafone managed to add 6,000 contract customers during the quarter.
The company added however that it had recently passed 100 million 4G customers worldwide, and that data usage was on the up, with sim-only contracts now making up just 30 per cent of its UK customer base.
Broadband boost
However there was much better news in the company's home broadband division, which saw its strongest quarter to date in adding 39,000 new customers, as its total customer base reached 316,000 across the UK.
This growth came largely following major discounts across many of Vodafone's broadband and mobile offerings as it looked to react to similar price drops from BT, with chief executive Vittorio Colao stating that the company was now selling at “a pretty convenient price”.
“BT has started offering mobile at a very low price to their fixed broadband customers. We are simply reciprocating the other way round," Colao said, “I don’t know if its a danger or an opportunity. We are small in fixed broadband in the home so we can grow quite a bit.”
“We made strong progress with our fixed and convergence strategy, achieving our best ever quarter for customer growth in high speed broadband in Europe. We also continued to grow our Enterprise business – boosted by our world-leading Internet of Things platform – despite the impact of regulation."
