Bell reports strong Q3 2018 earnings, wireless subscriber base reaches 9,487,368

BCE posted its Q3 2018 results and during the three month period earned $5.877 billion in revenues, up 3.2% over the same period last year.

Specifically, from a wireless perspective, Bell continued to increase its subscriber base, now accumulating a total of 9,487,368 subscribers, which is an increase of 5.3 percent from the same period a year ago. Total postpaid subscribers are 8,728,436, while prepaid dramatically jumped by 57.7% year-over-year — mainly from its Lucky Mobile brand — to 758,932.

Wireless revenue increased by 5.9 percent to $2.18 billion. However, postpaid churn (which is the number of subscribers departed the carrier) increased by 2 basis points to 1.10 percent.

Blended average billing per user (ABPU) decreased 0.7 percent to $69.28, which Bell said the reason was “due largely to the dilutive impacts of customer activations from the federal SSC contract,” and more activations on prepaid customers.

During Q3, Bell went live with its LTE-M network, announced a connected car Wi-Fi hotspot partnership with Ford, announced plans to raise its U.S. Roam Better and Roam Sweet Roam rates, and decided to raise its wireless connection fees to $35.

In addition, Bell unveiled a new brand image and content strategy for CraveTV, now known simply as Crave. “Bell Media today announced the all-new Crave content platform that combines HBO Canada, The Movie Network (TMN) and other premium programming, available now through participating TV providers and as a breakthrough streaming service available to all Canadians with Internet access beginning this Monday November 5.”

Source: Bell