The new consumer data tariffs from Vodafone and Orange in the UK continue the trend towards dramatically lower data prices for high end users, although they are cunningly structured to involve more moderate increases for low end users

Vodafone and Orange are planning to share their 3G networks in the UK, and are looking at potentially sharing their 2G networks in due course

Vodafone UK’s new broadband product is not very competitively priced compared to the offers from Carphone Warehouse and Orange, costing £5-10 a month more than the nearest equivalent packages

Orange UK’s converged mobile and broadband brands and ‘free’ broadband offer has not proved a big hit with consumers, with Orange reporting just 25,000 DSL net additions for the September quarter, likely to be below 5% market share

In a fit of pique over increasing subsidies, Vodafone UK is dropping Carphone Warehouse (CPW) as a distributor, and moving exclusively to Phones4U with lower subsidy levels and volume guarantees, while Orange is reportedly also considering its position with CPW

Orange’s new ‘free broadband’ offer brings savings of up to 60% for Orange UK customers who pay for broadband, and may appeal to a great many of them 

On Wednesday Orange announced a simple new single tariff range for all its new contract users. Although there are some benefits to both consumers and Orange of tariff simplification, the main impact appears to be to increase the price of calls for off-peak users, which is a sensible strategy for Orange and consistent with other tariff increases we have seen recently. Orange may lose customers because of this, but it has helpfully given four weeks warning of the change to the other operators, who may react with changes of their own.

Weak economic growth is usually blamed, but we believe that other forms of communication are substituting for fixed voice calls. Substitution of fixed line calls by calls from mobile phones is increasingly less important. By contrast, our conclusion is that Internet-based communication (email and instant messaging) has recently become a far more important source of competition to fixed line voice calls.

The Orange Prospectus

We have forecast that the increase in the number of users during the whole of 2001 will be as follows

European mobile service revenue growth improved for a fourth consecutive quarter jumping 1.7ppts to -2.7%, the slowest rate of decline in over three years. Easing declines in France, Italy and Spain largely drove the improvement but a full recovery in these markets is still some way away given that all of their growth rates remain below -5%. The UK, and now Germany, are experiencing positive mobile service revenue growth although their improvements in the quarter were more modest

Three announced consolidation transactions have yet to be approved by the regulators although none of these deals are likely to offer much market repair, being either of the wrong kind of deal or being in markets that are growing. Consolidation targets remain in France, Italy and Spain which offer clearer routes to market recovery as seen in Germany where the consolidation of O2/E-Plus has already led to positive rhetoric on medium term market growth prospects

Network investment continues with 4G roll-outs at or over 70% population coverage in all markets and targets being accelerated, supporting long term optimism in the sector. Strong data traffic growth coupled with the growing importance of data to service revenue give a clear focus for operators on value-adding network quality investment, although the impact of pricing competition in some markets could weigh on the ability to capitalise on these trends in the medium term

In this presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony for the quarter to March 2010, based on the published results of the major service providers. We include our own estimates where reported data is incomplete.

Highlights in the quarter included a bounce in quarterly broadband market net additions sufficient to pause the historical decline in year-on-year subscriber growth, continuing relatively strong broadband subscriber growth at the major ISPs, stabilisation in both the level of telephony market revenue and the rate of growth in unbundled lines, and the soft launch of highly competitive bundled offers by Tesco.