Carphone Warehouse profits fall due to free broadband costs

In its year end results, Carphone sees profits fall by 15.6 percent due to rising costs from it’s free broadband service.

Since the launch of it’s free broadband package, Carphone suffered with over-demand and left many customers waiting weeks or even months before being connected to the service due to service availability. 

Since that time however, Carphone has expanded its LLU broadband availability and says that 80 percent of new customers are now being provisioned directly onto their network rather than having to use BT Wholesale.  Waiting times are also being reduced to up to 3 weeks from sign-up for those customers.

By March 2007, 655,000 customers were live on the new service.  In total, Carphone has 2.27 million customers following the acquisition of AOL’s UK customer base.

Despite the falling profits, Carphone said the outlook remained positive and announced a 30 percent increase in its dividend payout to shareholders.