Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao has shared the latest updates on Project Spring, the telecom operator’s massive Capex program.
The telecom service provider said it has completed 71 percent of the mobile program.
Project Spring Update
# modernized 80,000 mobile sites
# added 36,000 2G sites
# added 47,000 3G sites
# added 41,000 4G sites
# upgraded 71,000 sites to high capacity backhaul
Vittorio Colao, group chief executive, said: “We continue to hit our Project Spring build milestones and customers are beginning to value the improvement in service that is resulting: contract churn in Europe is now falling and mobile ARPU trends are stabilizing in a number of key markets.”
As per the Project Spring program, Vodafone has modernized 80,000 mobile sites, added 36,000 2G, 47,000 3G and 41,000 4G sites, and upgraded 71,000 sites to high capacity backhaul.
Vodafone has expanded its next generation cable and fiber networks (NGN) to an additional 820,000 households in Europe in the quarter. With this, the total number of households with Vodafone NGN in Europe is 26 million or 62 million including wholesale arrangements.
4G outdoor coverage of Vodafone in Europe increased to 75 percent in Q1 from 52 percent a year ago. Vodafone targets 90 percent 4G coverage by the end of this financial year.
Vodafone has reduced the dropped call rate in Europe to 0.58 percent from 0.90 percent when it announced Project Spring.
In India, Vodafone added 1,000 2G and 1,100 3G sites in the quarter. Vodafone India targets 95 percent 3G coverage in targeted urban areas by the end of the year.
As a result of the Project Spring investment program, data traffic carried over network grew by 78 percent in Q1 FY 2016 against 81 percent in Q4 FY 2015. Vodafone achieved data traffic of 97 percent in AMAP and 64 percent in Europe.
Vodafone has 24.1 million 4G customers across 18 markets and 4G now accounts for 35 percent of all data traffic in European markets. The number of active data users across markets increased by 6.6 million to 122.2 million in AMAP.
Vodafone has 18.9 million 4G customers across Europe. The telecoms increased its 4G coverage to 78 percent in Germany and has 5.5 million 4G customers.
Vodafone Italy 4G network now provides 88 percent outdoor coverage and has 2.7 million 4G customers, with data add-ons more than doubling year over year.
Vodafone UK has 4.7 million 4G customers. 4G outdoor population coverage reached 68 percent in the U.K.
Vodafone Spain has 3.3 million 4G customers. 4G outdoor population coverage reached 78 percent in Spain.
Vodacom said churn fall to 7.2 percent. 4G outdoor population coverage for Vodacom reached 41 percent. 82 percent of all mobile sites now connected with high capacity backhaul.
But Project Spring is yet to assist the telecom operator to bring spruce up revenue. Vodafone Group revenue fell 0.9 percent to £10.11 billion or $15.69 billion.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
