Bell now has 9,957,962 total wireless customers, which is a 3.6 percent increase from 2018, according to its Q4 2019 earnings report.
This number breaks down to 9,159,940 postpaid wireless subscribers and 798,022 prepaid wireless subscribers.
When compared to Q4 2018, the carrier had a total of 9,610,482 total wireless subscribers, which was broken down into 8,830,216 postpaid wireless subscribers and 780,266 prepaid wireless subscribers.
Bell had 121,599 postpaid subscriber net activations in Q4 2019, while it had 121,780 in Q4 2018.
“Postpaid gross additions in Q4 were up 1.7 percent over last year, driven by increased market activity during the Black Friday to Christmas holiday period and strong sales execution across our retail channels,” the carrier notes.
Further, it had 1,983 prepaid wireless subscriber net activations, compared to the 21,334 reported in Q4 2018.
Bell explained that “while gross additions increased 42.9 percent, reflecting strong demand for our low-cost Lucky Mobile prepaid service and exclusive national retail distribution agreement with Dollarama, customer churn increased 1.96 percentage-points to 5.14 percent.”
The carrier’s average billing per user (ABPU) decreased by 0.4 percent to $67.20, while it was $67.26 in Q4 2018. Bell says this is due to the impact of unlimited data plans on data overage revenue, a high mix of instalment plans in the customer base and dilutive impact of a greater number of prepaid subscribers.
Bell’s postpaid churn rate slightly increased to 1.28 percent in Q4 2019, while it was 1.26 percent in Q4 2018. Churn rate is the percentage of subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions in a month.
“Wireless operating revenue grew 3.6 percent in Q4 to $2,493 million, with service revenue up 1.6 percent to $1,619 million, reflecting continued postpaid subscriber growth and a stronger revenue contribution from prepaid,” the carrier notes.
Additionally, Bell announced the launch of its 5G network in partnership with Nokia as its network equipment supplier.
