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    Plusnet expands fibre footprint with Deutsche GigaNetz deal 

    Simon Dux
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    Plusnet expands fibre footprint with Deutsche GigaNetz deal 

    In a fragmented fibre market in Germany, altnets are still moving fast to build their businesses and not always by overbuilding

    Energie Baden-Württemberg owned telco Plusnet is expanding its nationwide fibre optic footprint in Germany through an agreement with Hamburg-based fibreco Deutsche GigaNetz. As a result of the deal, Plusnet will gain access to around 500,000 marketable fibre-optic connections in 11 federal states served by Deutsche GigaNetz for its own business customer portfolio. The deal means Cologne-based Plusnet will deliver its internet access, cloud telephony and networking services to more areas.  

    “As an open access player, we are looking to collaborate with other infrastructure companies as part of our nationwide fibre optic strategy in order to gradually expand our marketable fibre optic network,” said Plusnet CEO Ulrich Hoffmann. “Through the agreement with Deutsche GigaNetz, we are taking the next step and helping to avoid uneconomical overbuilding and still create more competition.”  

    “Open Access is an important, strategic component in our corporate strategy to enable the highest possible utilisation while maintaining a variety of service providers on the networks we have built,” said Deutsche GigaNetz co-founder and managing director Soeren Wendler. “We are pleased to have Plusnet, an important partner with a focus on business customers, and to be able to provide fibre…as the infrastructure of the future to this target group.”  

    Open access fibre to prevent overbuild 

    Through the cooperation with Deutsche GigaNetz as well as agreements already made with other infrastructure partners such as Deutsche Telekom, Eurofiber and Glasfaser Nordwest, Plusnet said it has laid the basis for its own fibre optic network platform. In the future, the Cologne-based telco plans to use its Netbridge open access network to provide fibre optic networks from different providers nationwide into a virtual network and open it to all market participants via open access: an important lever for enabling local competition and sustainable business through efficient network utilisation in the fragmented fibre landscape in Germany – currently with around 170 network operators. 

    A new study by DIALOG CONSULT and the VATM found that by mid 2024, 45.9 million households in Germany will have access to Gigabit connectivity mostly thanks to altnets but they want a more certain regulatory and political environment to protect their investment. 

    Fourth-fifths (80%) of that increase is directly due to altnets that compete against the former incumbent, Deutsche Telekom (which uses the Telekom Deutschland brand within Germany). Altnets have a fibre take-up rate of 35.1% versus the Telekom Deutschland’s adoption rate of just 13% as it continues to sweat its vast copper assets. 

    Since April 2021, Plusnet has been consistently pushing forward its own fibre optic strategy and the modernisation of its own communication network from copper to fibre. The telco is investing in the development of its own fibre optic infrastructure and is also expanding its marketable fibre optic network through collaborations, which it believes will help avoid market-destroying overbuilds.  

    Pictured (from left to right): Soeren Wendler, co-founder and managing director of Deutsche GigaNetz, Ulrich Hoffmann CEO of Plusnet

    PAIX Data Centres chooses Djibouti for carrier-neutral data centre 

    Simon Dux
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    PAIX Data Centres chooses Djibouti for carrier-neutral data centre 

    The Internet traffic of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia typically passes through Djibouti to reach the subsea cables traversing the Red Sea

    Pan-African provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral colocation facilities, PAIX Data Centres, has announced a strategic joint venture with the Djibouti Sovereign Fund to construct a cloud and carrier-neutral data centre in Djibouti. PAIX already has facilities in Accra, Ghana, and Nairobi, Kenya, plus a number of other data centres in the pipeline.  

    Ten undersea cables connect to Djibouti, with further cables under construction, making the data centre a key access point for PAIX and its customers that wish to serve emerging markets in the region. 

    PAIX will purchase the land, buildings and data centre equipment. The facility will have about 50,000 square feet of net usable space and up to 5 MW of critical power. The first phase is expected to open in 2026. The new facility will serve as a strategic interconnection hub for ISPs, cloud providers, financial institutions, and enterprises.  

    “PAIX’s investment in JIB1 positions it at the crossroads of connectivity between Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” said PAIX Data Centres CEO Wouter van Hulten. “The strong network hub that is created by the aggregation of multiple undersea cable landing points connecting to terrestrial cables makes Djibouti a highly attractive gateway.” 

    He added: “We have received strong interest from our connectivity, CDN, social media, and cloud customers seeking to serve the emerging markets that can be accessed by these cables. We plan to develop thriving magnetic cloud and content hubs in Djibouti.” 

    Raza Hasnani, managing director at investor Africa50 said: “We are excited to be supporting PAIX in its partnership with the Djibouti Sovereign Wealth Fund to develop this project, which will further enhance Djibouti’s positioning as a connectivity hub in Africa.” 

    “As the heart of Africa’s digital economy, Djibouti plays a strategic role in facilitating connectivity between Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, PAIX Djibouti will serve as a catalyst for digital inclusion and economic development, empowering businesses to unlock new opportunities and realise their full potential in the digital age,” said Djibouti Sovereign Fund CEO Slim Feriani.  

    “Recognising Djibouti’s pivotal location in Africa’s communications landscape, we eagerly anticipate the benefits this partnership between PAIX Data Centres and Djibouti Sovereign Fund will bring to the region,” said AFR-IX telecom CEO Norman Albi. “ 

    He added: “This development fills us with great enthusiasm as we anticipate leveraging the enhanced connectivity options facilitated by this state-of-the-art data centre. Here’s to the success of this collaborative endeavour.” 

    Djibouti wants to be a digital hub 

    Pretty much all of the cables landing in the country land at Djibouti Telecom’s cable landing stations which offers cable head access, cross connect and backhaul services to the Djibouti Data Center’s Tier 3 facility, which is practically next door to the Haramous international cable landing station in Djibouti City – with a fully redundant fibre ring interconnecting all Djibouti Telecom cable landing stations.  

    All subsea fibre cable systems landing in Djibouti are connected to the DDC facility on diverse fibre paths. These include SMW3, EIG, EASSy, WIOCC, AAE1, SMW5, and YEMEN-Djibouti. 

    “Over the past fifteen years, we have invested $200 million in twelve submarine cables, making our territory an exchange and rallying point between Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, thereby reinforcing connectivity and interoperability between the regions,” Djibouti Telecom international business director Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed told African Business.

    “To get to Europe, all the submarine cables pass through the Red Sea, and therefore potentially through our country. By setting up here, operators can easily switch cables and thus reach different parts of the planet. Today, Djibouti Telecom serves more than 50 telecoms operators with connections to over 90 countries,” he added. 

    DT Global Carrier ramps up API and CPaaS push

    Annie Turner
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    DT Global Carrier ramps up API and CPaaS push

    The division says Digital Services portfolio is unique in Europe, created to meet the needs of wholesale customers and their enterprise clients

    Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier (DTGC) is launching a new portfolio within its Global Carrier Digital Services. It says the move is responding to the needs of its wholesale customers and their enterprise clients and the first such offer in Europe.

    DTGC says the portfolio is accessed via a portal. It enables wholesalers to manage wholesale services for their customers and configure the ready-to-go white label section to suit their brands and needs.

    The portfolio also enables wholesale customers to provide offers to their enterprise customers which gain access to services, “but also a branded experience”. Features include price management, enterprise billing enablement and invoice generation will be added.

    New CPaaS service

    One of the new digital services is the Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS).
    This cloud-based delivery model allows wholesalers to add real-time capabilities like messaging, voice and video to business applications through APIs.

    One of DTGC’s main customers participating in this initial phase is virtualQ, a provider of call-back solutions and contact centre optimisation in Europe. It has been working with DTGC for a few months. Bundling DTGC’s secure telecom services with virtualQ’s algorithms to manage call volume management meets requirements is intended to meet the needs of companies with global operations.

    Possible examples include health insurance companies, financial organisations, sensitive public institutions and other enterprise authorities.

    This is the second strand of its DT’s API strategy. Last September, Deutsche Telekom announced it is to charge developers and business customers for the use of APIs on its mobile network in Germany. The APIs will allow the third parties to build apps and services, using information and functions from the network. The API portal will run on the Vonage platform, owned by Ericsson

    A unique European offering

    All services within Global Carrier Digital Services portfolio are deployed and operated from within the European Union, adhering “to the highest data protection and privacy standards”. This makes it suitable for wholesale customers in highly protected sectors such as healthcare and public sector administration.

    DTGC provides dedicated support from first contact to development, deployment and subsequent operations, the operator says. All services are available immediately and the portfolio is to be continuously enhanced based on customers’ requirements.

    Bertold Frech (pictured), VP International Strategy, Marketing & Steering at DTGC Carrier, stated, “We are keenly aware of the resource challenges our wholesale customer face on a daily basis, which was a main driver for setting up the new Global Carrier Digital Services portfolio.

    “It offers current as well as many new digital services tailored to our customers’ specific needs, and also enables them to launch with almost zero integration requirements into their respective IT landscapes.”

    Germany is catching up fast in gigabit connectivity, but could DT scupper progress?

    Annie Turner
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    Germany is catching up fast in gigabit connectivity, but could DT scupper progress?

    Some 78.6% of premises have access to gigabit connectivity mostly thanks to altnets but they want a more certain regulatory and political environment to protect their investment

    A new study by DIALOG CONSULT and the VATM found that by mid 2024, 45.9 million households in Germany will have access to Gigabit connectivity via fibre optic and/or hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks.

    This equates to 78.6% of homes and buildings, and is an increase of more than 2 million premises passed since the end of 2023. Fourth-fifths (80%) of the increase is due to alternative network providers or altnets that compete against the former incumbent, Deutsche Telekom (which uses the Telekom Deutschland brand within Germany).

    Further, altnets have a fibre take-up rate of 35.1% versus the Telekom Deutschland’s adoption rate of just 13% “despite its great marketing strength”.

    The report says this is due to the former incumbent’s strategy of squeezing as much profit as it can out of the sunk cost of its copper local loop using vector technology to boost transmission speeds instead of prioritising fibre build-out and take-up. 

    Note that the VATM represents more than 160 telecoms and multimedia companies active in the German market, all of which compete against the former monopoly, Deutsche Telekom.

    Altnets supply and meet 90% of demand
    Now 35.9 million out of 45.7 million households and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have access to gigabit connectivity. As in previous years, the increase over the last 12 months is around 2 percentage points, so there is still a way to go, but where gigabit connectivity is available, it is proving popular.

    In the first half of 2024, the volume of data generated via gigabit-capable connections grew by 7% per connection per month, averaging out at 435 gigabytes. “We certainly see a gigabit effect: high capacity connections are very popular with customers despite higher prices,” says Walter. More than half of the altnets’ customers opt for bandwidths of 250Mbps or higher. More than 42% of SMEs request bandwidth of at least 500 Mbps.

    Overall, more than 90% of the homes with an activated Gigabit connection source the service from a competitor to Telekom Deutschland, with cable/HFC networks increasingly building or converting to FTTB/H connections.

    The fibre ratio in the first half of 2024 increased by 1.1% to 17.7% compared to the previous year, with the proportion of altnets accounting for 70.4% share of this, and in rural areas, they account for more than 72%.

    Fibre last except to undermine rivals?

    Despite their success, altnets face some serious challenges. Study leader Andreas Walter notes [translated from the German], “Deutsche Telekom has thrown in the towel regarding investment displacement, [preferring] a more lucrative continuation of copper DSL…Therefore, it mainly focuses on passing properties and connects much fewer customers. This has a significant impact on the expansion of fibre optic networks, on digitalisation and our business locations.”

    Dr. Frederic Ufer, Managing Director at VTAM, elaborates, “Even Deutsche Telekom’s latest expansion activities would be inconceivable without the investment emanating from the competitors…the Federal Network Agency [the telecom regulator] must look more at Deutsche Telekom’s regulation because its fibre network shows a fatal trend towards re-monopolisation.

    “The overall picture shows that Deutsche Telekom is expanding its market share via faster DSL by 100,000 connections and thus is financing a dominant, strategic superstructure through cherry picking.”

    In other words, Deutsche Telekom’s rivals need the commitment from politicians, regulators and behemoth itself that it will not choose to build and market infrastructure and services in areas that already have access to gigabit connectivity to undermine its smaller rivals.

    The report concludes that to remain in the fast lane for gigabit expansion and to strengthen competition, the country needs clear rules for Deutsche Telekom’s migration from copper to glass, rather than deregulating the former monopoly.

    The full results of the gigabit study 2024 are available HERE in German.

    Digi doubles Q1 profit, plans to expand into Portugal and Belgium

    Annie Turner
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    0
    Digi doubles Q1 profit, plans to expand into Portugal and Belgium

    The group’s share price rose 63% in the last year and it has lined up credit of €167.5 million to invest in networks in the Iberian peninsular

    The Romanian headquartered Digi Communications announced its net profit more than doubled to €33 million in Q1, up from €14.3 million for the same period last year. Digi reported consolidated revenues in Q1 2024 of €447 million, a 12% increase versus Q1 2023. The adjusted EBITDA for Q1 2024 amounted to €163.1 million, a rise of 21.9% year on year.

    The adjusted EBITDA, excluding the IFRS 16 impact, was €139.9 million, an increase of 23.4% over the time the previous year. The company’s market capitalisation is now RON5.9 billion (€1.2 billion) after its shares rose 63% over the last year.

    The company says its performance aligns with the management’s projections for 2024, underpinned by solid growth in strategic markets.

    Success in Spain

    Serghei Bulgac (pictured), CEO of Digi Communications, stated, “Following a year of remarkable expansion in 2023, we are thrilled to report a robust first quarter of 2024. Our key markets, Romania and Spain, have maintained strong performance and allowed us to reach a historical milestone of 25 million clients served, across all three markets of activity.

    “This important growth from the first three months of the year was driven by our mobile segment in Spain, which grew by 23.6%, reaching 5 million customers. In parallel, Spain’s broadband segment experienced accelerated growth of 56.7%, now serving 1.5 million users. Romanian mobile users exceeded 6 million with an increase of 16.3% year on year.

    “These figures indicate another year of anticipated growth, aligning with our expectations and capability to meet evolving consumer needs in a competitive landscape. We are committed to continue to deliver superior quality at affordable prices across vibrant European markets, including established regions and new markets in Belgium and Portugal, where we are gearing up for the service launch.”

    Digi is Spain’s largest MVNO and benefited from the tie-up between MasMovil and Orange earlier this year. The European Union was keen to preserve competition in Spain and insisted on remedies to bolster Digi as a condition for the merger to go ahead.

    Credit facilities for networks

    According to Romania-Insider, Digi Communications has signed three loans totalling €167.15 million to develop telecoms networks in Romania, Spain and Portugal. It cited a note to investors as its source.

    It has in place two export credit facility agreements for a total of €117 million with Citibank Europe that is intended to finance the purchase of goods and services for the development of telecommunications networks in Romania and Portugal.

    Digi plans to launch telecommunications services in Portugal towards the end of the year.

    In addition, this week Digi Spain Telecom agreed a non-committal bridge credit facility for €50 million from Banco Santander to finance working capital.

    Odido dumps legacy to build B2B marketplace services with partners 

    Simon Dux
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    Odido dumps legacy to build B2B marketplace services with partners 

    The Dutch telco has big aspirations but first must undertake big perspirations to sort out its back-office systems

    Dutch telco Odido is taking action to overcome its back office integration woes by choosing BSS and ecosystem orchestration company Beyond Now to help it achieve large scale digital transformation, at least in the B2B space initially. 

    With approximately eight million customers, Odido is one of the big three telecom providers in the Netherlands, serving both individuals and businesses. It wants to be the largest provider of 100 percent fiber-optic internet in the country, aiming to offer internet and TV services via fiber optic to more than six million households.  

    However, since the merger between Tele2 Mobile and T-Mobile Netherlands – and subsequent new brand launch last September – Odido has been dogged by internet connections issues and poorly functioning customer service. Dutch consumer TV show Radar has received more than 1,000 complaints about Odido. According to Emerce, a third of people with an internet connection at home have had problems with the quality of this connection in the past 12 months. Odido scored the worst: customers experience the most problems and these are also solved the least often. 

    In addition, Odido has the highest percentage of unresolved complaints at 49%, while for the other providers this is between 32% (VodafoneZiggo) and 43% (KPN). Of this group of Odido customers, 80 percent have been experiencing these problems for more than a month.  

    Sorting out enterprise services first 

    Beyond Now will now underpin the telco’s B2B expansion strategy. The adoption of Beyond Now’s platform will enable the Dutch operator to partner with third parties, offer “enriched B2B solutions” to its SMB and enterprise customers, and replace its legacy BSS. The operator is fast tracking its monetisation and orchestration of partner offerings at scale, helping to drive new revenues from the growth in demand for B2B2X solutions. For those wondering, B2B2X is a business model that allows business one to use technology to sell its products through business two – a marketplace.  

    Beyond Now’s Digital Business Platform is a cloud native solution built on a microservices architecture with Open APIs and it’s delivered through containers. Those containers are orchestrated by Kubernetes with a PostgreSQL database backend, delivering high performance data access through Elasticsearch and Redis.  

    The new platform covers more than just billing; it also covers charging, order fulfilment, product lifecycle management, and product catalogue, as well as partner orchestration. Odido aims to replace what it inherited from Tele2. This will focus on replacing the legacy manual partner management processes and product databases. 

    Odido uses Netcracker to sort consumer

    Last month, Odido engaged Netcracker Technology to expand the introduction of existing back office workflows in the plan of consolidating several critical processes across various sub brands and legacy environments onto Netcracker Digital BSS.

    The operator was already using Netcracker Digital BSS for Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and Order Management. In the expanded transformation project, this will grow to include Product Management (Product Catalog and Product Lifecycle Management. Netcracker will lead the BSS platform consolidation project, which will positively impact Odido’s B2C customers through a reduction of complexity and legacy systems, modernization of the entire technology stack, cloudification of its BSS platform and enhancement of the end user experience.

    Orchestrating enterprise service partners 

    In the latest project, Odido will use Beyond Now’s platform to facilitate the rapid onboarding of its 40 partners to seamlessly co-create and co-sell their solutions, benefiting from faster time to market and improved ability to scale operations. The 40 providers will be migrated onto Beyond Now’s digital business platform, which critically, will support ecosystem management and orchestration.  

    Essentially, the platform supports a model for creating multi-partner solutions which will be key to Odido expanding its range of offerings for business customers. It improves partner management capabilities which will enable Odido to experiment, test, launch and monetise new offerings quickly – across multiple technologies and services (e.g. OTT, TV, 5G or IoT), from its entire partner ecosystem. Beyond Now’s platform will also help to facilitate Odido to launch new services including fixed internet, partner products, mobile and SD-WAN. 

    “We aim to deliver the best customer experience and service. Since Odido’s rebranding last year, we have been on a fast track towards digital transformation, driving efficiency improvements that enable us to focus resources on developing partner-led solutions that meet our business customers’ needs,” said Odido chief commercial officer enterprise Martijn Teekens. “We’re delighted to have Beyond Now at our side, supporting us with proven expertise that will enable us to rapidly introduce these new offerings and grow our business.” 

    “Odido recognises that improving operational agility and time-to-market is fundamental to addressing the significant growth opportunity available to CSPs in the B2B sector,” said Beyond Now CEO Angus Ward. “Ecosystem orchestration is a growing priority for CSPs that want to maximise partner synergies, especially if they are to capitalise on new revenues coming from B2B2X offerings.” 

    He added: “Our platform ensures that Odido will be well positioned to monetise new technologies and orchestrate complex use cases involving multiple partners, suppliers and industry specialists. Slotting in this final piece to the partner puzzle will provide Odido’s tech savvy SMB and Enterprise customers with the complete solutions they need.” 

    Watching Telekom’s experience 

    No doubt Odido has been watching Telekom Deutschland – the domestic subsidiary of Telekom – and its progress in building its Infonova Digital Business Platform, which underpins the customer support and service portal for a central marketplace for customers in Germany, allowing them to orchestrate the sale, ordering and fulfilment of this B2B2X offering – with Beyond Now at its heart.  

    Last year, Deutsche Telekom launched a new digital unit aimed at Germany’s enterprise market under Telekom Deutschland (TD) which is responsible for the group’s domestic market operations. This will make digital services from Deutsche Telekom and partner companies more accessible to enterprise customers in Germany, and to the customers of those organisations (B2B2X), delivered through a B2B2X digital marketplace.  

    Beyond Now’s platform underpins the customer support and service portal for a central marketplace for customers in Germany, allowing them to orchestrate the sale, ordering and fulfilment of this B2B2X offering. Through its multi-tenancy capabilities, every partner or reseller will have their own tenant, so that they can not only sell the TD services catalogue to their customers, but also integrate their own products and services and manage them through the platform. 

    Romania sees solid fixed line broadband speed increases 

    Simon Dux
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    Romania sees solid fixed line broadband speed increases 

    Regulator ANCOM says fixed wireless access is increasing across the country

    Internet users in Romania last year recorded an average download speed of 587Mbps for fixed line internet in 2023, up by around 10% compared to 2022, and an average upload speed of 548Mbps, up by an impressive 20%, according to Romanian regulator ANCOM based on tests it carried out using its Netograf platform, which offers access to detailed statistics on several broadband quality parameters. In all the regulator carried out 85,000 fixed line tests.  

    One of the more striking findings from ANCOM is the big jump in wi-fi speeds connecting to fixed line networks. In 2023, the average download speed for wi-fi was 156Mbps which was up 15% compared to 2022, while the average upload speed was 126Mbps (up 13%). 

    “From the analysis of statistics for 2023 for fixed internet, there is generally a consolidation of a trend of balancing average download and upload speeds in fixed networks (cable and wi-fi) for large providers on the Romanian market (depending on the number of connections), which suggests adapting electronic communications services to users’ needs,” stated the regulator. 

    According to think tank, Blue Europe, Romania’s internet penetration rate is one of the highest in Europe, surpassing even some of the continent’s wealthiest countries like France, Belgium, Finland, and Austria. In January 2023, Romania had 17.82 million internet users, indicating an 88.9% internet penetration rate of the total population. 

    Blue Europe points out that Romania stands out in the European Union and globally for offering some of the most affordable fixed internet services. Climbing three positions in the global ranking, Romania now boasts an average monthly broadband cost of RON 35 (USD 7.57), marking a decrease from the previous year. The range of internet packages varies significantly, with the cheapest subscription at RON 6 (USD 1.30) and the most expensive at RON 45 (USD 9.73).  

    Mobile only sees mixed results  

    In terms of mobile internet access, statistics obtained from tests conducted by users within the Netograf platform in 2023 revealed an average download speed of 39Mbps (compared to 38 Mbps in 2022) and an average upload speed of 12Mbps (compared to 15Mbps in 2022). ANCOM said around 31,000 valid tests were conducted on mobile internet providers. 

    In January, Opensignal reported that Orange won its Download Speed Experience speed test with a score of 37.8Mbps and a lead of 4.5Mbps over runner-up Digi Mobil; Orange wins Upload Speed with a score of 11.8Mbps, 0.9Mbps above the closest competitor — Vodafone. These measures are obviously not just 5G.  

    Market in flux 

    While a lot of focus goes on Digi Romania or RCS&RDS, the other operators in Romania and ramping up their own strategies. In January, Orange Romania agreed to a full merger of its mobile and fixed operations, with the Romanian Government owning a 20% stake in the combined operator. The government approved the merger in December between Orange Romania, the largest telecom group in the country, and Orange Romania Communications, the former state telecom company Romtelecom, in which Orange owns 54% of the shares and the Romanian state holds the remaining 46% through the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalisation. 

    Meanwhile in February, Vodafone announced it was installing new Open RAN sites in 20 cities across Romania, following successful tests it started with Samsung and other partners last year in the country. That was in addition to signing a six-year deal with Ericsson to replace mostly Huawei kit with the Swedish vendor’s 5G RAN portfolio including Massive MIMO, Antenna System and latest generation of radios and basebands in the country. 

    The EU recently reported that compared to the pre-pandemic levels in 2019 (91%), 2023 saw an increase of 2.9 percentage points (pp) in fixed broadband connection among enterprises across EU countries. The most notable increases were seen in Greece (15.8 pp), Romania (15.6 pp), and Bulgaria (8.7 pp). In fact, Romania is only behind Denmark on EU enterprise fixed line connectivity – well above the EU average.  

    Acquisition of Vodafone Spain to Zegona gets green light from country’s regulator

    Annie Turner
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    Acquisition of Vodafone Spain to Zegona gets green light from country’s regulator

    The sale is expected to complete at the end of May 2024

    Spanish authorities have granted the final approvals needed for the sale of Vodafone Spain to the British investment house Zegona Communications. The transaction is expected to complete at the end of May 2024.

    At that point Vodafone will receive €4.1 billion in cash (subject to customary closing adjustments) and €0.9 billion in the form of Redeemable Preference Shares.

    Consequently, Vodafone intends to commence an initial €500 million share buyback programme on 15 May 2024, as part of its plans to return €2 billion over 12 months.

    According to Vodafone Group’s annual earnings report announced earlier today, the group’s net debt stands at €33.2 billion. The deal will not involve the transfer any debts associated with Vodafone Spain to the new owner.

    The Spanish market

    Zegona was established in 2015 with the objective of investing in businesses in the European Telecommunications, Media and Technology sector and improving their performance to deliver better shareholder returns. Zegona is led by former Virgin Media executives Eamonn O’Hare and Robert Samuelson. 

    Zegona Communications is in negotiations to acquire Avatel Telecom, which specialises in rural broadband and is the fifth largest fixed broadband provider in Spain.

    The Spanish market is undergoing major upheavals, having proved fiercely competitive market. This spurred the €18.6 billion merger between Orange (the second largest operator in Spain behind Telefonica) and Másmóvil (the fourth largest) announced in summer 2022. It gained all the necessary approvals in Spain and from the European Union in March and renamed itself MasOrange.

    MasOrange is now Spain’s largest converged operator, overtaking incumbent Telefonica.

    Vodafone Group is also divesting itself of its Italian opco to Swisscom, via Swisscom’s Italian subsidiary Fastweb, for €8 billion. The two have a binding agreement, but are awaiting the necessary approvals to complete the transaction.

    Vodafone rises in Africa, despite currency falls

    Annie Turner
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    Vodafone rises in Africa, despite currency falls

    Group profit rises 2.2% despite tough conditions and CEO claims transformation plan is working

    Vodafone Group reported its annual results broadly in line with expectations, posting core earnings of €11.02 billion from revenues of €36.7 billion. The group’s service revenue dropped 1.3 percent, but on an organic basis, increased by 6.3%, with opcos in Europe and Africa, and its Business division all growing. With the exception of Turkey, the Group had service revenue growth of 3.7% (to €29.9 billion) on an organic basis. (Our analysis of Vodafone Group’s results in other regions can be found here.)

    The operator group announced that total revenue in Africa declined by 8.1% to €7.4 billion due to the depreciation of local currencies against the euro. Hence service revenue decreased by 9.2% but organic growth in service revenue grew by 9.2%, with growth in South Africa, Egypt and Vodacom’s international markets.

    In South Africa, service revenue growth was supported by consumers taking up contracts for mobile and price rises to those contracts in the first quarter. Also there was good fixed line growth in Consumer and Business. Growth slowed in Q4 due to a strong prior year comparative, reflecting an acceleration in customer data usage during widespread power outages, and pressure on wholesale revenue. Financial services revenue grew by 7.9% to €156.9 million on an organic basis, supported by growth in our insurance services. 

    Service revenue in Egypt grew strongly during the year and accelerated in Q4, above inflation. The acceleration was supported by sustained customer base growth, price increases in mobile and fixed, robust demand for data and strong growth in our financial services product, ‘Vodafone Cash’. Vodafone Cash revenue more than doubled in FY24 to €95.8 million. 

    In Vodacom’s international markets, service revenue growth was supported by a higher customer base and strong M-Pesa and data revenue growth. M-Pesa revenue grew by 13.4% on an organic basis and now represents 26.8% of service revenue. 

    Adjusted EBITDAaL declined by 11.8% during the year. On an organic basis, adjusted EBITDAaL increased by 6.4%, supported by service revenue growth and cost initiatives, partially offset by an increase in technology operating expenses associated with higher energy costs. The Adjusted EBITDAaL margin decreased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year (organic: -1.1 percentage points) to 34.2%. 

    Customers 

    In South Africa, Vodafone added 125,000 contract customers in the year, and now has a mobile contract base of 6.8 million. It added 5.7 million mobile prepaid SIMs in the year, supported by our big data led customer value management capabilities which offer personalised bundles to customers. Across its active customer base, 81.5% of mobile customers now use data services, an increase of 3.3 million year-on-year. The VodaPay super-app continued to gain traction with 5.8 million registered users. 

    In Egypt, Vodafone added 437,000 contract customers and 2.4 million prepaid mobile customers during the year, bringing the total to 48.3 million customers. ‘Vodafone Cash’ now has 8.2 million active users with 2.8 million users added during the year. 

    In Vodacom’s international markets, the operator added 4 million mobile customers and its mobile customer base is now 54.2 million, with 63.5% of active customers using data services.

    Vodafone’s annual profits up 2%, CEO says recovery on track

    Annie Turner
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    Vodafone’s annual profits up 2%, CEO says recovery on track

    Is progress fast enough to keep investors happy with dividend halved from next year?

    Vodafone Group reported its annual results broadly in line with expectations, posting core earnings of €11.02 billion from revenues of €36.7 billion. The group’s service revenue dropped 1.3 percent, but on an organic basis, increased by 6.3%, with opcos in Europe and Africa, and its Business division all growing. With the exception of Turkey, the Group had service revenue growth of 3.7% (to €29.9 billion) on an organic basis.

    Vodafone’s operating profit decreased by 74.6% to €3.7 billion, but the fall was largely due to business disposals over the 2023 financial year, most notably, the €8.6 billion it gained from divesting Vantage Towers.

    Undervalued?

    Shares in Vodafone have fallen 22% in the last 12 months and by 44% since 2019. It only rose slightly after the earnings announcement, propelled by the promise of a €2 billion share buyback by the company. Vodafone said it would pay ¢9 dividend per share for 2024, but would halve this going forward to invest in its networks.

    Net debt, not taking into account the sales of opcos in Spain and Italy, remained flat at €33.2 billion.

    James Beard at the Motley Fool makes an interesting case for why the share price should be 87% higher here. He also writes, “With regards to profitability, selling Spain and Italy is likely to improve the company’s ROCE [return on capital employed] by ‘at least’ one percentage point. This might not sound very much. But in FY23 it would have been worth another €1.1bn (7.7%) of operating profit.”

    Good news and bad

    Top-line growth in the final quarter was boosted by gains in Germany – its biggest European market – and the UK. Over the year, Vodafone’s service revenues from Germany grew by 0.2% but accelerated to achieve 0.6% in the fourth quarter. However, adjusted core earnings fell 5.8% due to higher energy costs and other inflationary factors.

    It is also braced to lose 4 million customers in Germany, at an estimated cost of €400 million, when a regulatory change comes into force in July. Until now, people in multi-tenancy buildings had to accept the TV and broadband service provider their chosen by the owner. Now each unit within the building will have the right to choose their own.  

    Vodafone acquired about 8.5 million customers within multi-tenancy buildings when it bought Liberty Global’s German operating company, along with those in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania for €18.4 billion in August 2019.

    Della Valle said that business in Germany was expected to improve and by 2026 “will come back to being an important growth engine for the group”.

    The UK remains a strong market for Vodafone, but the question of whether the £15 billion (€17.44 billion) proposed joint venture with Three UK is allowed to proceed hangs in the balance. In the last financial year, mobile service revenues rose 5.4%, boosted by double-digit price hikes. 

    A better place?

    Vodafone seems to be in a better place than it was a year ago when it reported earnings of €14.9 billion and the CEO laid out her recovery plan.

    Della Valle said in a statement, “A year ago, I set out my plans to transform Vodafone, including the need to right-size Europe for growth. Since then, we have announced a series of transactions and we are now delivering growth in all of our markets across Europe and Africa.

    “We performed slightly ahead of expectations in the financial year, with good organic service revenue growth of 6.3% and organic EBITDAaL [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation, and adjusted loss] of 2.2%.

    “Our Business division – a key growth driver – achieved 5.4% revenue growth in the fourth quarter. Much more still needs to be done in the year ahead. We will step-up investment in our customer experience, improve our underlying performance in Germany and accelerate our momentum in Business, whilst also continuing to simplify our operations thshare

    roughout the group. We are fundamentally transforming Vodafone for growth.”

    Focus on customer service

    Vodafone said it is working to transform customer experience, having reallocated €140 million in new incentives and plans to develop talent. It has started processing customer insights using real-time AI models, feeding into detailed action plans on a weekly basis in all markets.

    Vodafone says frontline tools and improved processes have benefited 70,000 team members, although it also reduced headcount by 5,000 in line with the three-year recovery plan announced by Della Valle at the annual earnings announcement last year. Another 2,000 jobs are due to follow, to reach an overall target of shedding 11,000 jobs by 2026 and cutting operating costs by €1 billion.

    Vodafone’s recovery plan appears to be progressing. Whether it will ultimately succeed remains to be seen.

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