2007 Financial Year Compared to the 2006 Financial Year
Europe
Mobile telecommunications KPIs
| Germany | Italy | Spain | UK | Other | Europe | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Closing customers (’000) | – 2007 | 30,818 | 21,034 | 14,893 | 17,411 | 17,007 | 101,163 |
| – 2006 | 29,191 | 18,490 | 13,521 | 16,304 | 15,692 | 93,198 | |
| Closing 3G devices (’000) | – 2007 | 3,720 | 3,762 | 2,890 | 1,938 | 2,353 | 14,663 |
| – 2006 | 2,025 | 2,250 | 902 | 1,033 | 1,230 | 7,440 | |
| Voice usage (millions of minutes) | – 2007 | 33,473 | 32,432 | 30,414 | 31,736 | 28,491 | 156,546 |
| – 2006 | 26,787 | 29,604 | 23,835 | 28,059 | 27,648 | 135,933 | |
The Europe region, where market penetration exceeds 100%, experienced intense competition from established mobile operators and new market entrants as well as ongoing regulator imposed rate reductions on incoming calls. As part of the implementation of the Group’s strategy, the 2007 financial year’s performance saw a strong focus on stimulating additional usage in a way that enhances value to the customer and revenue, including significant tariff repositioning to maintain competitiveness in the UK and Germany. On the cost side, the centralisation of global service platform operations was completed in the 2007 financial year, with good progress made in the consolidation and harmonisation of the data centres, and a number of new initiatives to reduce the cost structure were implemented.