Orange has positioned itself as the ‘challenger’ in the Belgian market since it launched fixed broadband offers over cable in 2017. Since then it has led customer growth on the mobile and broadband markets, supported by discounts and double data for its mobile customers who bundle their plans with the Love fixed packages.
Orange’s new Go mobile plans have dropped the double data offer, and the Love discount is only available for customers taking the top mobile plans, starting at EUR 30 for 15 GB per month. Having accustomed subscribers to large data bundles, Orange is now employing the ‘more for more’ strategy to have customers pay for the big bundles. This follows two consecutive quarters of lower revenues at the operator.
Service revenues were down 1 percent year-on-year at Orange in Q4, following a decline of 1.7 percent in Q3 2019. This was still less than declines of 4.1 percent at Telenet and 8.3 percent at Proximus in Q4, the figures from Telecompaper show.
"Orange’s new pricing is still very competitive compared to the offers at Telenet and Proximus and should not significantly impact its customer growth," said Marion ter Welle, Telecompaper’s senior analyst for the Belgian market. "However, it cannot rely on fixed price increases like Proximus and Telenet to shore up revenues, so needs to be more creative with its mobile pricing. With all three operators now firmly focused on the higher end of the market with fixed-mobile packages, more intense promotional activity can be expected to put further pressure on revenues in the quarters ahead."
Detailed figures on all KPIs on the Belgian mobile market are available in Telecompaper’s quarterly Excel sheet. A full market analysis is provided in the Belgian Total Comms report, the latest edition of which will be published later this month. For more information or a customised analysis, please contact research@telecompaper.com.
