Vodafone sees big drop in TV customers

Vodafone lost 140,000 European TV customers in its fiscal third quarter to the end of December.

Vodafone Deutschland alone lost 112,000 TV customers in the quarter. Vodafone Spain, the operator’s other main TV market, saw  TV subs dip by 9,000. The drop in TV customers in both markets came despite the inclusion of OTT and boxless TV customers for the first time.

In other markets, Vodafone lost 17,000 TV customers in Italy but gained 13,000 in Portugal. In other European markets it lost a total of 15,000 TV customers.

The net losses meant that Vodafone had a grand total of 17.9 million TV subscribers at the end of December, including 12.9 million in Germany and 1.5 million in Spain.

Vodafone said its German operation suffered from continue commercial underperformance, with service revenue overall declining by 1.8% primarily due to the impact of customer losses, in turn partly due to legislative requirements. Mobile service revenue also fell due to a lower customer base.

On the positive side, the company said that its converged customer base remained broadly stable at 2.3 million converged consumer accounts. Half of cable broadband customers now subscribe to speeds of at least 250Mbps and Gigabit speeds are available to 24.1 million households across the network.

In Spain, Vodafone saw its service revenue decline by a whopping 8.7% due to price competition, a lower customer base and a reduction in mobile termination rates.

The Spanish unit’s mobile and broadband bases also declined in the quarter, by 19,000 and 27,000 respectively, while converged customers declined by 6,000 to 2.2 million.