Vodafone today said its fiscal 2014 revenue dipped 1.9 percent to £43.61 billion. It says Capex (capital spending) for the next two years will be £19 billion including Project Spring.

The global telecom operator said its service revenue decreased 2.4 percent to £39.52 billion in FY 2014.

Vodafone, which does not have a 4G presence in India, has 47 million LTE subscribers in 14 markets. 4G data usage has more than doubled that of 3G data usage, Vodafone said.

Vodafone said its AMAP region service revenue rose 6.1 percent, driven by emerging markets India at 13 percent, Vodacom 4.1 percent and Turkey 7.9 percent.

India business

Vodafone India service revenue increased 13 percent, driven by customer growth, data usage as well as improved voice pricing.

Mobile customers increased by 14.2 million during the year to 166.6 million in fiscal 2014.

Vodafone India said data usage grew 125 percent during the fiscal, resulting from a 39 percent increase in mobile internet users and a 67 percent increase in usage per customer. Vodafone has 52 million active data customers including 7 million 3G customers.

The telecom carrier’s M-Pesa covers most parts of India.

Vodafone India EBITDA grew 26.4 percent with 3.3 percentage point increase in EBITDA margin, driven by the higher revenue and the resulting economies of scale on costs.

Capex

Vodafone said its Capital expenditure (Capex) increased 13.3 percent to £7.1 billion. This includes CWW for 12 months, KDG from October 2013, fiber roll-out in Spain, and Project Spring program in Germany and India. In addition, it acquired and renewed spectrum for £2.2 billion in India, Romania, New Zealand and the Czech Republic, with a cash cost of £0.9 billion during the year.

Network focus

Vodafone says it aims to better network experience to customers. It will focus on investing in mobile voice and data networks, and next generation fixed line technologies. 67 percent of its 3G footprint in Europe now operates at peak speeds of 43.2 Mbps, up from 42 percent one year ago.

Vodafone 4G services are available in 14 markets. By Q4, 18 percent of data traffic carried in Europe was 4G, and over 80 percent of data sessions take place at more than 3 Mbps, the level required for high definition video streaming.

Project Spring  

Vodafone aims to reach 91 percent population coverage by 2016 with 4G in Europe.

The mobile operator is targeting 95 percent population coverage in India by 2016 with 3G service.

It will be laying fiber to more base stations to cover more residential areas across in Europe and in selected emerging market urban areas.

Vodafone is planning to expand its M2M reach to 75 countries and will be rolling out hosting and IP-VPN services internationally.

In addition, Vodafone will modernize 8,000 retail shops across the Group to improve the customer experience.
Baburajan K