Originally Posted by Denco1:
“4G customers have made a healthy jump, on track for over 7 million next year. Saying that is the increase attributed to moving customers over to 4G plans and after this 4G takeup will reduce significantly?”
Yes but there's still a long way to go so 4G numbers will grow rapidly for some time. A lot of upgrades will be 4G from 3G and normal churn will continue to boost 4G. The change in customer totals might only be 100k or so in the quarter but remember this is a net adds figure made up of gross adds minus losses. Almost all of the gross adds will be 4G whilst the losses are mainly 3G.
However, whilst it's nice to see the 4G numbers, it isn't the most important thing. Now the changes due to regulatory headwinds have stabilised, the networks are all focussed on trying to grow service revenues again. It's a bit difficult to judge O2 because of Refresh which distorts the revenue numbers somewhat but overall it seems to have stabilised.
My feeling is though that the revenue O2 lose from Refresh when customers reach the end of their minimum term and their tariffs reduce isn't being wholly compensated for by the extra customers it should generate. I think this is why we haven't seen it replicated by the others.
EE clearly demonstrates that 4G numbers don't mean much with its last quarter numbers which were frankly disappointing. Despite being way out in front on 4G numbers growth, revenue is still going backwards when they really should have turned it around by now. We'll see what Vodafone bring next week but unless they've seen a major reverse they should be okay as they had already returned to growth at the end of last year.