Vodafone halves loss in first half

Vodafone Hutchison Australia lost $81.5 million in the first half of its 2017 year despite increased customer numbers and revenues.

However, this figure is down by almost half compared to the first six months of last year, when the telco lost over $162 million. 

It comes off the back of a 3.5 percent increase in total customer numbers to 5.7 million, and a 3 percent revenue bump to $1.6 million for the first six months of the year.

Annual revenue per user increased by 2 percent to $45.89 thanks to customers buying larger data plans. Average customer data usage also grew from 3.2GB a month to 4.8GB.

VHA's chief financial officer James Marsh attributed the improved figures to increased spend on the telco's network: the company will spend $2 billion this year - double that of 2016 - to improve coverage, capacity, and performance.

The money will fund 1800 new and upgraded cell sites and fibre transmission circuits in metro and regional areas, but will mostly go towards spectrum licence payments, Marsh said.

The $2 billion also doesn't include the cost of 700MHz spectrum, which will be booked in 2018.

Vodafone also today said it would offer customers a temporary 4G connection for customers that are waiting for NBN broadband to be set up.