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Bell now has a total of 9,957,962 mobile customers. This corresponds to an increase of 3.6 percent compared to 2018, as can be seen from the earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2019.
This number consists of 9,159,940 postpaid mobile subscribers and 798,022 prepaid mobile subscribers.
Compared to the fourth quarter of 2018, the mobile operator had a total of 9,610,482 mobile customers, which was divided into 8,830,216 postpaid mobile customers and 780,266 prepaid mobile customers.
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Bell had 121,599 net activations of postpaid subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2019, compared to 121,780 in the fourth quarter of 2018.
“The gross growth after incoming payments in the fourth quarter rose by 1.7 percent compared to the previous year, which is due to the increased market activity during the holidays on Black Friday to Christmas and a strong sales execution in our retail channels,” explains the freight forwarder.
It also had 1,983 prepaid net activations for wireless subscribers compared to the 21,334 reported in the fourth quarter of 2018.
“While gross growth increased 42.9 percent due to strong demand for our affordable Lucky Mobile prepaid service and exclusive national distribution agreement with Dollarama, customer churn increased 1.96 percentage points to 5.14 percent,” Bell notes.
The network operator’s average billing per user (ABPU) decreased 0.4 percent to $ 67.20, compared to $ 67.26 in the fourth quarter of 2018. According to Bell, this is due to the impact of unlimited data plans on data breach earnings, a high mix of rate plans in the customer base, and dilutive effects from a larger number of prepaid subscribers.
Bell’s postpaid churn rate rose slightly to 1.28 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, compared to 1.26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. The churn rate is the percentage of subscribers who cancel their subscriptions within a month.
“Revenue from the wireless business increased 3.6 percent to $ 2,493 million in the fourth quarter. Service revenue increased 1.6 percent to $ 1,619 million. This is due to the continued growth of postpaid customers and a stronger contribution to sales through prepaid, ”said the carrier.
Bell also announced the launch of its 5G network in collaboration with Nokia as a network equipment supplier.
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