back to article O2 daddy Telefónica reports 12.5% drop in UK sales

Sales at Telefónica UK, which owns O2, plunged 12.5 per cent to €6.8bn (£5.7bn) for the firm's full year, mainly due to currency changes. Organic revenue fell 1.5 per cent. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation fell 11.4 per cent for 2016 to €1.7bn (£1.4bn), increasingly organically by 1.7 per cent. …

  1. werdsmith Silver badge

    I blame it on a weak network and product choice.

  2. annodomini2

    Not competing

    Price rises when others are supplying a more cost effective product and an unwillingness to discount when presented with those options are the reason I left.

    I was happy with the service, but I'm not paying through the nose for it.

    I would suspect many others have left for the same reason.

  3. Philippe

    not too bad

    The drop is only 1.5%, the rest is due to the exchange rate against the Euro, now that the post referendum Sterling is a third world currency. It will get worse before it gets better,

    Networkwise, I am starting to see the results of their investment. Up to 6 months ago, I was lucky to get EDGE in my house, now it's almost always 4G.

    4G has almost become ubiquitous, Can't complain

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: not too bad

      Oh you lucky bastard, What I wouldn't give for Edge - Generally I am lucky to get a signal just to make a phone call in my house.

      And don't get me started on 02's network in Central London and particularly Canary Wharf during business hours is beyond a joke, says 4G but won't even load basic web pages, calls drop while showing full signal strength.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: not too bad

        calls drop while showing full signal strength.

        That's because (mostly) your signal strength indicator only shows how strong the cell-site signal is, not the load on the cell-site..

  4. Doctor_Wibble
    Trollface

    Organic revenue

    The drop in organic revenue is due to the disastrous lettuce harvest, don't let this crazy talk of currency fool you!

  5. Zmodem

    whats wrong with 3 buying o2 when BT can buy EE

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      One of those options reduces the number of competing mobile networks, one of them doesn't.

      1. Zmodem

        EE has 30 million customers most of which came with t-mobile and orange, EE buying those and merging them was ok, no one with a braincell would choose to switch to EE with rubbish plans and data and call charges

        BT brought EE for its fibre and wholesale pricing so they can control all mobile networks, and want the money directly by making mobile internet slower then landlanes so 4G is running at 0.4Mbps, the other 38% of the 80% of home broadband users get bored and get a 20Mbps land line that runs at 2Mbps from BT

        Three and o2 can bring the compition back to BT and EE and lay down their own fibre with less customers and unlimited data without throttling or caps and have mobile data running faster then land lines

        three's 3G network is faster then EE and o2's can peak at 7.2Mbps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx9Q8zHgMzQ

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The other man's grass: Wild optimism at Telefonica

    If they think that IoT is going to save them, they perhaps need to sober up, have a strong coffee.

    The value of IoT will be minimal, and it will be like mobile phones, that the bulk of any value that accrues will be unevenly distributed. Most will go to platform owners, followed by a subset of successful IoT tatmakers. Device retailing by the telcos will be a tiny margin business in a perpetual battle with low or zero margin internet retailers, and more complex installations such as home hubs or heating controls will see the value extracted by blue collar installation firms (eg British Gas).

    For all their ludicrously expensive advertising, the brand of the MNOs is weak, with low portability, and harmed by poor customer service. They can't put more money into customer service because at a market level people won't pay the extra when taking a new contract, so levels of trust will remain low. So they won't be able to change the dynamics mentioned above.

    The real growth opportunity would be to roll out proper 4G, allow tethering, arrange content delivery, and completely bypass the fixed line providers, but the MNOs seem to regard 4G as a costly nuisance that they would prefer not to have to deliver. They've seen the "dumb pipe" threat evolve for years, but still have done nothing about it. To be fair, I think that Telefonica are like most big companies - far keener to sell what they'd like to sell, rather than producing either what the market wants now, or what the market would want if it were offered.

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