By Ahmad Hathout
Bell’s president and CEO said Thursday that the telco is targeting the new year for the full launch of fibre-based internet service for its mobile wireless customers in western Canada.
Mirko Bibic said during the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call that Bell already has a trial in Kelowna, British Columbia for fibre internet service using Telus’s network, and that the telco is targeting January for a full launch.
“We are going to do all this in a very disciplined way,” Bibic said.
During its investor day conference last month, Bell said it was launching the service this month as part of a bifurcated strategy for eastern and western Canada: protect its retail position in the former and protect its mobile wireless customers in the latter, which means incrementally adding services such as content and internet to keep customers in the fold.
“Our focus in the west will be to protect our mobility base by offering more services in a disciplined way,” Blaik Kirby, the company’s group president of consumer and small business, said during the conference last month. “We will offer these wireless customers no set-top box Fibe TV and/or streaming content bundles to grow wireless sales and lower churn. And where necessary for the highest value customers, we will resell fiber internet.”
Bell will then look to utilize the CRTC’s wholesale framework to wholesale Telus fibre to provide its highest-value customers with internet services in that bundle.
“We think we can break the content/internet bundle that is in that market,” Kirby said last month. “So our strategy is two-fold: it’s really using our owner economics on content, bundling it with mobility base in a disciplined way. And if required, we will resell fiber internet to drive that bundle.”
Bell pre-empted that prospect this summer by launching a streaming bundle with Crave, Netflix, and Disney+, which has become a trend in the industry.
“Being more competitive in the west will significantly improve customer consideration of Bell, particularly for wireless,” Kirby added at the time. “With a strong focus on cross-sell and mobility and internet content bundling nationally, we expect this to translate to continued strong retail market share and overall better network penetration in the east and gains in wireless performance in the west.”
Bell CFO Curtis Millen hinted in September at the possibility that Bell could use Telus’s fibre to make a compelling offer to its rival’s customers – that is, the triple play of mobility, internet and content – but said ownership of the internet infrastructure is preferred.
While postpaid wireless net additions were down this quarter versus the comparable period last year, Bibic said it has seen significant growth over the period in subscribers on the premium Bell brand.
“Our premium Bell-branded post-paid wireless loadings are significantly higher than our consolidated reported post-paid net adds, with Bell-brand post-paid year-over-year growth exceeding 100 per cent,” Bibic said. “This is a clear indicator of strong customer demand and the strength of the Bell brand in the market.”
The company added 11,511 new postpaid subscribers the quarter that ended September 30, down 65.2 per cent against the comparable period. Gross postpaid additions were 315,607, almost 16 per cent lower than the adds over the same period, with a 15-basis-point improvement in churn, which was down to 1.13 per cent. The total postpaid base by quarter-end was up 0.5 per cent to roughly 9.5 million.
Prepaid net additions was 56,507, down 18.2 per cent against the comparable period last year. Gross additions were down seven per cent to roughly 199,000 for a total base of 873,579 – down 1.6 per cent. Churn was up 44 basis points to 5.10 per cent.
Monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) for the entire segment was down 0.4 per cent to $58.04.
Bell added 26,426 new internet customers, down almost 50 per cent against the comparable period, for a total base that was down 0.3 per cent to roughly 4.44 million.
The company lost 16,161 IPTV subscribers in the quarter, compared to a gain of roughly 9,200 subscribers in the comparable period, for a total base that was down 2.3 per cent by quarter-end to roughly 2.08 million.
The relative internet and IPTV numbers were negatively impacted by the fact that, in the first quarter this year, the company stopped selling new plans for services under the Distributel, Acanac, Oricom and B2B2C brands.
Total revenue for the quarter was up 1.3 per cent to roughly $6 billion, which assumes both Bell Communication and Technology Services (CTS) in Canada and Bell CTS in the United States (Ziply Fiber).
Bell CTS in Canada saw revenue of roughly $5.25 billion, which was down 0.6 per cent, while Bell CTS in the U.S. was $160 million. Bell media was down 6.4 per cent to $732 million.
Net earnings up to $4.5 billion – in part attributable to the sale of its stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE).
Bell executives also said the prospective buyers of its subsidiary Northwestel are still working with the federal government to secure funding. The $1-billion deal is now expected to close sometime in 2026.
They note that sell or not, it would have minimal impact on reducing debt and the company would be happy to operate it to serve the north. “We weren’t disposing of, or trying to dispose of, Northwestel because of deleveraging,” Bibic said Thursday. “It was for altogether different reasons.”
Bibic also said the revenue Bell is getting for leasing its wireless network under the CRTC’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) regime is “immaterial.”
“It’s not a big number,” he said. “It wasn’t a big component of, call it the ARPU stability, if you want, because there’s a slight decline there.”
Screenshot of Bell President and CEO Mirko Bibic at the company’s Investor Day conference in October
