Vodafone Group Plc Q1FY26 Q&A Transcript
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BNPP Exane
More broadly, in terms of technology roadmap for Germany, and as you know, each market has its own very different conditions, our starting point of any strategy, which is typically a layer of actions over time is what customers want, what customers need. In Germany, the majority of the customer is still on speed of under 250 Mbps. And in the context of Germany, what we want to make sure is we serve as many customers as we can with the gigabit speed, which by the way is as far as any, I would say, consumer application idea has gone so far. So, more than sufficient to solve all customer needs. We are today retailing the largest footprint. And this is the same as actually in the UK of gigabit speed in Germany. And we do so by combining the 25 million cable households with an additional 5 million of wholesale households in fibre. Today, three out of four of German households can buy gigabit products from us. What is next? On top of the OXG evolution that will continue to run according to its plans, for the MDUs in particular, we continue to fiberise at pace the cable network. And you know the drill there. We are adding fibre segments. And on the back of that, we deliver a very good experience for our customers. And we see fibre advancing, I would say, organically within the network. I was mentioning earlier that we continue to be rated as the best network in the country across all technologies in terms of speed and in terms of reliability. And this is a testimony of this investment plan. And then selectively, what we are introducing in terms of the cable sequence in Germany is ‘ high split ’ , which is a technology that can also help with the speeds, particularly in enhancing the uplink speed. In the end, it is what I would describe as a multi-year technology pathway, which, we think, is definitely appropriate for what our customers need in Germany. And really pleased once again with customer satisfaction there as well as the churn levels. Actually, just a small point on this. We talk about churn reducing in fixed broadband in Germany for some time. I was actually looking at this recently. And it has now not just below other big markets like the UK, but it has now effectively below most of our European markets. So, good position in fixed broadband there with our customers. Thank you for that. Does that mean then just on the cable network, you are the 1 Gbps maximum speed is likely to probably just remain in place for the next few years? There are not imminent plans for a headline speed increase?
James Ratzer
New Street Research
Margherita Della Valle
High split has an impact on that. It has impact on uplink and downlink. It will depend on the areas. However, in terms of the multi-gig story, keep in mind that even the gigabit products in Germany are still held by a very small minority of customers. Not only does it not have use cases, but it has really not on the radar. What people are optimising, which by the way is also true in the Netherlands, is the combination of price and quality. So, we are upgrading them to 1 Gbps, and it will take some time to get there.
Vodafone Group
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