The Belgian mobile market showed a healthy finish to 2020, with customer growth in Q4 only slightly lower than a year earlier and in Q3. Orange Belgium once again added the most new customers, but Telenet is showing the most improvement in revenues, research by Telecompaper shows.
The market ended the year with just over 12.1 million customers, up 2.4 percent from 2019. After nearly zero quarterly growth in Q2 when the coronavirus lockdown hit and a big improvement in Q3, the fourth quarter showed a net gain of 93,000 mobile customers added. Orange accounted for almost all the growth, adding 80,000 mobile subscribers in the quarter to pass 4.7 million total at year-end.
Proximus showed much more modest growth, ending 2020 with a total 4.6 million* customers, up by 1.6 percent from a year earlier. Telenet had the weakest performance, with a drop in customer numbers in Q4, all in the prepaid segment. Over the full year 2020, Telenet gained just 8,000 mobile subscribers for a total of just over 2.8 million at year-end.
Telenet only operator to grow revenues
The picture is different when comparing the operators on revenues. Service revenues on the total mobile market fell 3.6 percent year-on-year to EUR 670 million in Q4 2020, but Telenet managed to grow 1.2 percent to EUR 158 million. Proximus showed an over 6 percent fall in mobile service revenues, and Orange’s revenues were down 3.7 percent year-on-year.
"The Belgian mobile market is driven to a large extent by FMC offers, which explains much of the diverging performances at the three operators," said Marion ter Welle, Telecompaper senior research analyst for the Belgian market. "Telenet is focused on its high-end FMC packages, helping grow its revenues, whereas Orange’s strategy is much more aimed at adding market share. Proximus’s efforts to compete with both are putting pressure on its ARPU."
*Subscriber figures are not directly comparable due to differences in how M2M Sims are counted at each operator. A complete overview of market and operator KPIs is available in Telecompaper’s Belgian Mobile Operators report, the latest edition of which is available now for purchase. For more information, please contact research@telecompaper.com.
