The telco ended 2015 with 34.8 million LTE subs in 20 markets
British telecom group Vodafone recorded revenues of £10.3 billion ($14.91 billion) in its fiscal third quarter, ended Dec. 31, a decline of 5.5% compared to the same quarter a year ago. The telco attributed the decline in quarterly revenues to foreign exchange rate movements. Group service revenue was £9.2 billion in the quarter, down 6.3% year-over-year.
“With 7 million new customers in the quarter, we have maintained our good commercial momentum in mobile and are beginning to accelerate in fixed, as we launch converged services in more markets,” Vodafone Group’s CEO Vittorio Colao said.
In Europe, Vodafone generated revenues of £6.04 billion in the quarter, declining 7.1% year-over-year, while revenues from operations in Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific totaled £2.92 billion, down 3.6%
Vodafone said it continued to make good progress on Project Spring, which is now nearing the end of the deployment phase having completed 92% of the mobile build. The telecom group said it has added 165,000 mobile sites, modernized 102,000 sites and upgraded 91,000 sites to high-capacity backhaul since the project began. For the full year to March 2016, Vodafone said total capital expenses is expected to reach between £8.5 billion and £9 billion.
In Europe, Vodafone hit 84% LTE population coverage, up from 65% a year ago. The operator also said it has deployed LTE carrier aggregation across 7,300 sites in Europe to enhance data performance, and voice over LTE is already commercially available in four markets.
Vodafone Group ended 2015 with 34.8 million LTE customers across 20 markets, posting 4.7 million net addition in the latest quarter. In Europe, 23% of the telco’s subscriber base now use an LTE service, with LTE devices accounting for 45% of all data traffic on Vodafone’s European network.
Vodafone counted a total of 122 million mobile subscribers in Europe at the end of the quarter, up from 121.5 million at the end of the previous quarter. The largest European market in terms of subscribers was Germany, with almost 30.4 million mobile subscribers, followed by Italy with 24.4 million, the U.K. with 18.4 million, and Spain with 14.25 million subscribers.
The telco also ended 2015 with 338.9 million mobile subscribers in Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific. In India, Vodafone ended the quarter with 193.6 million subscribers in the mobile segment. During the quarter, Vodafone India added 7,600 3G sites, taking the overall population coverage in targeted urban areas to 94%.
