British mobile phone operator: Higher revenue for Vodafone, but Luxembourg tax

"Mobile telecommunications company Vodafone reported a surprising set of second quarter results, as service revenues rose 1.2 percent which was well above the 0.8 percent expected" by the market, said Ian Forrest, investment research analyst at The Share Centre.

Underlying revenues rose 1.2 percent in the three months to September 30, above analyst expectations. Broadband coverage has increased by 3.6 million homes since last year, with 0.5m homes signing up in the first half of the year, and the company is continuing to invest in order to expand coverage in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Vodafone (VOD.L) took aim at Europe's former state telecoms companies like Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) and BT (BT.L) on Tuesday, saying that unless regulators get tougher on giving their rivals better and cheaper access to their networks, new monopolies would emerge and customers would suffer.

Data traffic usage grew by 75 percent as the average European customer increased their usage by 39% in the latest quarter.

Vodafone also had 0.5 million net new broadband buyers at the very first half the year's end and 2.7 million cellular deal net brings.

The report showed that a few of the company's struggles came from continued service revenue drops in Europe, which recorded a dip of 6.2 percent in reported terms and a 1.3 percent dip organically to 12.1 billion pounds ($18.2 billion).

The company says it has benefited from a steady improvement in Europe's economy - particularly in southern countries - enabling it to offer 4G services to 80 per cent of its customers.

It nudged its full-year guidance for pre-tax earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) up to between £11.7bn and £12bn. The company's talks with John Malone's Liberty Global fell apart in September.

"In the United Kingdom, in order to run a parallel infrastructure, we need access to the Openreach duct, and it's not economic to do that", Colao said.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Companies like BT and Deutsche Telekom - and not by coincidence Deutsche Telekom is now the largest shareholder of BT so we have a German BT or a Deutsche BT - like to use what they have, which is the copper network, modernise it, to reduce competition".

Vodafone's results on a reported level saw growth reduced by currency headwinds, and it stated that it would switch from reporting in sterling to euros for the 2017 financial year.

It also reiterated it had started preparations to float its Indian unit, potentially in its next fiscal year, Mr Colao said.