Television signal: TV customers: Vodafone tightens gait at “Black Sea”

According to its own information, the telecommunications group Vodafone is increasingly focusing on switching off television signals if previous customers have not yet completed a new tariff and see free TV. This deals with tenants who have paid the TV costs with their rental agreement by mid-2024 and no longer do so because of a change in the law.

“We inform our customers several times and we also clamp: If customers use our television signal, then of course we also want them to pay for it-that’s just fair,” says Vodafone Germany boss Marcel de Groot of dpa. This is “the very last remedy”, but it is done.

In doing so, he contradicts the criticism of the competitor Deutsche Telekom, which is slowly promoting TV customers in the advertisement for TV customers and partly justifies this with vodafones alleged velvet gloves towards TV users. Vodafone had actively left customers and tolerated free use so that they did not switch to the competition, Telekom boss Tim Höttges recently speculated.

Change of law becomes a headwind for Vodafone

A legal regulation called ancillary cost privilege was positive for Vodafone for decades: landlords were able to convert the costs for television connections to all tenants. As a result, Vodafone had it relatively easily on the television market, while competitors such as Telekom had a heavy stand with their magenta TV. In July 2024, however, the additional cost privilege expired. Since then, tenants have to take care of a television connection or – if the landlord enables this – they voluntarily join a collective agreement.

Within a year, Vodafone lost around four million television customers. Deutsche Telekom won only around 0.3 million fixed contract customers. In addition, there are 0.3 million Telekom customers who use Magenta TV separately from the Internet contract as an extra service that can be terminated monthly. There are also competitors such as Waipu and Zattoo who also offer online television. But even if you calculate their numbers, it should be much less than the four million that Vodafone has lost.

According to Vodafone, this should also be due to the fact that there are customers who have used several TV offers in the past, but now only one. This double use occurred if a tenant had a television connection, so to speak, inevitably, but had a different contract separately.

Vodafone advertises the lost customers

“We have lost this change in the law in sales,” says Vodafone-Deutschland-Coo de Groot. “But we reach our self-imposed goals here. It was clear that the entire TV market would noticeably reduce itself through this change in law.” Customers have been informed several times and offer them attractive contracts including an internet connection. “Every customer who now concludes a broadband contract with us receives TV by default.”

However, not all customers have reacted to this – because they have switched to competitors, no longer need television at all or have always used other offers. In addition, those who have not noticed the change in the law and those who consciously see black and see. He could not say how many households that the Vodafone television signal used today without a contract.

According to his assessment, most of the black visits did not intentionally, but they just couldn’t have noticed it or they would have noticed it, but then forgot. “However, if we have spoken to customers several times and consciously choose a new contract, we also clamp it,” says de Groot. The company boss does not give a number for how many households Vodafone has already parked the television signal. Vodafone has 8.8 million television customers in Germany.