The CRTC released their annual “Communications Monitoring Report” last week and revealed that 2012 brought the number of Canadian wireless subscribers reached 27.9 million. Majority of these subs were from the Roger, Bell and TELUS, but 5% (1,395,000) were from the new entrants.
A new report from the Convergence Consulting Group might bring a bit more clarity to this years subscribers numbers. They’ve released their annual report called “Canadian Wireless: Assessing The Impact of New Entrants” and forecasts the newer players will have 7% (1.93 million) of Canadian wireless subs by the end of 2013, up from 6% (1.6 million) year-end 2012. The report also sheds light on year-end 2014 and predicts another percentage increase to 8% (2.4 million), but this number highly depends on the ‘outcome of the 700 MHz Auction and the potential merger or sale of Independent New Entrants.’
As for ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), Convergence states that the new entrants (Videotron, EastLink, Mobilicity, Public, Wind) undercut the monthly voice and data price plans of the incumbents by ‘up to 63% & 57% respectively.’ Not too surprising as most of the new players offered sub $30/month all-in promo plans for most of the year.
Source: Convergence
