However, Telefonica said its Spanish unit showed significant resilience during the unprecedented crisis, registering positive net additions across all types of segments, with total accesses growing in the quarter to 41.66 million, down 0.5 percent year on year. Following the lifting of restrictions, commercial activity started to recover rapidly, with fibre net adds in May some 21 times higher than in April.
Mobile lines up 7% on postpay boost
Mobile accesses continued to grow, rising 7.4 percent year on year to 18.96 million thanks to over 70,000 postpay additions in the quarter due in part to the launch of its first residential unlimited data plans in April. Total postpay lines reached 15.28 million on 30 June, up 2.2 percent year on year. Prepay lines, on the other hand, were down 19.5 percent to 1.01 million.
Convergent customers (consumer and SMEs) remained flat year on year at 4.84 million but customers subscribed to premium fibre accesses rose by 14 percent year on year while O2 Spain customers tripled. Quarterly convergent ARPU dipped 1.7 percent to EUR 91.3 due to the exceptional effects of Covid-19 (suspension of football and closure of venues) but the number of consumer converged accesses were up 0.4 percent to 4.9 accesses per customer.
Fibre up to 74% of broadband base
Total fibre accesses (retail plus wholesale) soared by 133,000 in Q2 alone to 6.8 million thanks to a 26.7 percent surge in wholesale and a 7.4 percent rise in retail. In fact, fibre now represents 74 percent of the broadband retail base and 63 percent of the total wholesale base, following an increase in the network uptake to 29 percent of the company’s 23.7 million premises passed at the end of Q2, the latter up 228,000 in the April to June period.
New ‘Digital Deal’: 100% FTTH coverage by 2025
In that regard, Telefonica announced the launch of a new "Digital Deal" in line with the government’s recent “Spain Digital 2025” commitment. The company said it intends to make the greatest effort to promote the “complete digitalisation of Spain” by ensuring that its fibre-optic networks will cover 100 percent of the country by 2025.
Telefonica said the five commitments of its new digital deal are boosting digitalisation for a more sustainable society and economy, addressing inequalities by investing in digital skills and adapting the welfare state, building inclusive and sustainable connectivity, ensuring fair competition by modernising the fiscal, regulatory and competition frameworks, and improving trust through ethical and responsible use of technology.
