The Spanish competition regulator (CNMC – which regulates telecommunications in Spain) has published market data for December 2018.
The market shows important stabilisation, given that the drop-out rate has fallen significantly: in December the subscription turnover rate for mobile telephones fell 13.4% yoy, and was the second consecutive month with a downward trend.
The turnover of mobile telephone customers fell for the second consecutive. In the opinion of analysts at Santander Research, this is the best news in Spain’s telecommunications market data in December, “given that during the previous 18 months, customer turnover grew continuously yoy.” “This confirms reduced promotional activity after an intense Q318, when offers associated with football content increased, especially at the medium and high end,” the experts add.
The fixed broad band market registered an increase of 500,000 lines in 2018 (an increase of further 500,000 lines in 2019 is foreseen). Good growth continues in the fixed broad band market continues at an inter-annual rate of 3.5%. December was affected by seasonal factors, but MasMovil continued registering the highest number of net new subscriptions: +34,000 (+132,200 in Q418), or a share above 100% of net subscriptions in December. Euskaltel (+2,000, +2,300 in Q418) and Orange Spain (+3,500, +23,900 in Q418) also showed positive trends in December. Telefonica (-11,500, +7,500 in Q418) and Vodaphone Spain (-3,000, -6,000 in Q418) remained in negative territory in December.
Spain: a fibre market
Currently there are 8.56M lines of fibre to home or FTTH (+2.0M yoy, market share of 57.6%) versus 3.73M xDSL lines (share of 25,2%, growth of 10 percentage points yoy) and 2,3M cable network lines. Cable has 15.8% of the market (-2.1 percentage points yoy). Other technologies account for 1.4% of the market.
A good momentum has been maintained in the mobile market (+3.8% yoy) without changes, thanks to the M2M (machine to machine) lines, which grew 19% yoy. Spain’s mobile market has 60.92 million lines, of which 5.9 million are M2M. Among the four mobile network operators, MasMovil has 597,900 lines, thanks to organic growth, while Lebara, Telefonica (+11.700) and Vodaphone Spain has 5,400 (compared to an average fall of 76,000 over the last four months). ORA Spain lost 53,000 mobile lines.
This is the second consecutive month with a fall in the dropout rate and analysts at Santander Research think that this will continue over the next few months, even taking into account the increased efforts by new brands like O2 and Vodafone Bit. “Good news for MasMovil, our favourite share value, and for Euskaltel. Recovery for Vodafone Spain in mobile telephony and neutrality for Telefonica and Orange Spain,” conclude.
