Over 7 million Brits have signed up for Vodafone’s 4G services which are now available to 91 per cent of the population.
According to the company’s latest financial figures, Vodafone is still a way off hitting the already missed target of providing 98 per cent population coverage by the end of 2015.
While that’s still wide of the mark, Vodafone says it’s ‘accelerating’ its 4G rollout. Back in February, the network claimed 85 per cent 4G coverage, suggesting that it’s pulling up its socks along with O2, with whom Vodafone has a mast-sharing agreement.
Vodafone Connect prices announced: £20/month for up to 76Mbps superfast broadbandWhile Vodafone’s got plenty of mobile customers, it signed up just 38,000 fixed-line Vodafone Connect broadband customers in the months between October 2015 and March this year. Over the same time period, Sky and Virgin Media added 190,000 and 135,500 new broadband customers.
Vodafone’s a newer player in the consumer broadband market and can’t be expected to compete with the more established brands just yet.
Right now the main benefits of signing up for Vodafone broadband depends greatly on whether or not you’re a Vodafone mobile customer. While there’s some generous discounts on superfast FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) services giving you download speeds of up to 76Mbps, not everyone can or will make use of this.
The launch of a forthcoming TV service may change things, although Vodafone’s figures reveal next to no information about what kind of service this is or when it’ll be launching.
Field trials of the service are taking place now and Vodafone has plans to launch it ‘later in the current calendar year,’ chiming with what CEO Vittorio Colao has said in the past.
Like the service currently available in Ireland, Vodafone’s UK TV offering could offer subscribers a blend of digital terrestrial TV channels – the same as what you’d get on a Freeview HD box – with some on-demand extras, not unlike BT TV, TalkTalk TV and EE TV.
Vodafone currently has a partnership with Sky which sees 4G customers able to get free access to Now TV Entertainment and Sky Sports Mobile TV content for the duration of their mobile contracts. It’s unknown if this partnership will see Vodafone TV customers able to stream Now TV content on their set-top boxes.
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