According to Vodafone, new consumer protection rules are leading to more terminations. But there were also homegrown problems with the processes.
Vodafone Germany started the new financial year with a slight decline in sales. Service revenue for the first quarter fell by 0.5 percent year-on-year to EUR 2.86 billion, the company said on Monday in Dusseldorf. A decline in sales in the fixed network is offset by a slight recovery in mobile communications.
Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, fixed-network revenue fell by 1.6 percent to EUR 1.59 billion. For the first quarter of the 2022/23 financial year, Vodafone Germany reported 13.09 million TV customers in the fixed network and 10.77 million broadband customers. The number of contract customers has fallen by 34,000, Vodafone said.
67.5 million SIMs
In contrast, Vodafone was able to increase mobile sales slightly by 0.8 percent to 1.26 billion euros. The company was able to according to the information Gain 6000 new contract customers. Overall, Vodafone has 31.26 million mobile customers, of which almost 61 percent have a contract. 67.5 million SIM cards transmit in the Vodafone network, an increase of 2.8 million.
With regard to the tough business development, Vodafone refers to tightened consumer protection through the most recent amendment to the Telecommunications Act (TKG). Since December, for example, telecommunications contracts that have been automatically extended after their term can be terminated after one month. Numerous Vodafone customers also took advantage of this opportunity.
adjustment problems
The consumer protection rules also stipulate that providers must send a brief summary before a contract can be concluded. “In order to do justice to the changes in the law, we had to extensively adapt systems and processes,” says Vodafone. “Unfortunately, this adjustment did not work as smoothly as planned. The result: no new customer contracts came about.”
The German Vodafone contributes significantly to the result of the English mother. Including other sales, Germany has a total turnover of 3.27 billion euros. In the Vodafone Group, the service turnover of all national companies grew by 2.5 percent to 9.5 billion euros. Together with other revenues, the group has a total turnover of 11.28 billion euros. Vodafone has around 16,000 employees in Germany, 5,000 of them in Düsseldorf.
