2023-07-22 00:07:46
JOS M. RODRGUEZ SILVA
Updated Saturday, 22 July 2023 – 00:07
The new directive of the operator seeks a change of course that plugs the loss of customers
Vodafone storeEduardo ParraEuropa PressEmpresas Digi sweeps the telephone market: it gains more than 400,000 customers in six months
Business dynamics always show winners and losers. Companies enjoying their moment of glory and others forced to transform seek solutions to plug their losses. In this last situation it is Vodafonewhich seeks to redirect its image, marked by commercial calls, and escape the ballast that some of its past decisions entail, such as the purchase of ONO and the failure to close an operation with MsMvil.
The operator has lost 400,000 customers in the first half of the year, more than in all of 2022. To correct this, it has renewed its management team with the aim of correcting the commercial course that has been in decline for several years. In fact, the signature chains three years losing customers in fixed broadband, while in the mobile business, with 13 million customers, it has been more resilient, influenced by the rise of Internet of Things lines. The company presents this Monday the first financial results of its new fiscal year, after falling 6.5% in revenue in the past (completed in March 2023).
The final straw that aggravated the situation of the firm has been to be left out of the great consolidation of the sector, which will be carried out by Orange y MsMvilan agreement closed after more than a year of speculation and several moments in which Vodafone had the pact with MsMvil to reach. Now, the firm will remain as a third operator far removed from the first two.
The situation that has led London to place the company in “strategic review” in which all options fit on the table, from a sale of some asset such as the network, to the entry of a partner. However, until MsMvil y Orange do not complete their operation, the rest of the pieces on the Spanish board are not expected to move.
FROM ONO TO TODAY
Precisely, various market sources point to another operation to find the origin of the firm’s ills: the purchase of Ono in 2014, a cable company, a key technology in times of ADSL, but which has lost its validity in favor of fiber optics to connect homes.
This decision has left Vodafone with barely three million homes covered by fiber and just over seven million cable, compared to 17 million Orange and the 28 million Telephone. In addition, the acquisition of Ono This meant significantly increasing the group’s workforce, which resulted in several EREs to reduce costs and adapt the structure to the business, which have limited Vodafone’s investment capacity in other areas.
Precisely, the decision to bet on the cable, attributed to Londonconnects with another of the problems that the company has experienced: an excessive dependence on its parent company in the management that has caused a high turnover in management positions of the Spanish subsidiary.
The other decision questioned in the market was its resigns from football in 2018 for its high price. The decision seemed to pay off in the early years, where the operator managed to differentiate itself in television by being the first to close agreements to distribute streaming platforms, however, it has finally left the operator in a no-man’s-land between operators with soccer and low-cost.
COURSE CHANGE
Among the first movements since the arrival of Mrio Vaznew CEO, is back to subsidize mobile terminalsa measure designed to win back the most valuable customer in a market where low cost diminishes the customer base of the big brands.
At the discursive level, the new leadership has highlighted the need to improve brand image -a recent OCU study ranked Vodafone’s fixed broadband customers as the second most dissatisfied- with a simplified digital experience.
To do this, they have come to cut relationship with some subcontractors that they were not respecting the protocols established by the company, which, for example, is attached to the commercial code of ethics between operators that prohibits, among other things, calls at siesta time. Company sources point out that the new management is “radically” curbing customer flight with these measures and they are confident that figures will turn positive in the coming months.
In the section of positive news for the group, the company continues to maintain a strong position in the business marketwhere it ranks second in the market and continues to grow in multiple fields, from services for SMEs to IoT.
In parallel, Vodafone has doubled its commitment to Spain as a key technology hub for the group with major investments such as 225 million euros for an innovation center in Malaga, which add to the 700 million euros invested in the infrastructure of its traditional business each year. In this way, Spain has become for the entire group Vodafone at a key point for developing new services and hosting high-tech projects, a niche with increasing weight in the company’s business. Thus, the company has been selected to receive European funds with which to design new Open RAN chips in the Andalusian city.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
#Ono #MsMvil #siesta #call #Vodafones #crosses #Spain