We open up on this Presidents Day with some Canadian wireless news. Telus, one of Canada’s largest cell phone providers, is a bit disappointed with their fourth quarter results from 2007. It seems that they didn’t add nearly as many customers as they thought they would, marking the third straight quarter of discontent. The blame here is put on a “maturing Canadian cellphone market,” though I’m not quite sure what’s meant by that. In any case, the numbers for Telus aren’t looking so hot.

They added 161,400 new subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2007, which is down 11 percent from the same period in 2006. The worst part for Telus is that postpaid additions were down 18 percent, meaning they were adding less lucrative prepaid customers.

(They see us as less lucrative, but we see us as smart shoppers.)

The “maturing Canadian cellphone market” refers to the fact that there are fewer and fewer “new” Canadian customers. That is, most of them already have cell phones. So then it’s a matter of snatching up the ones whose contracts have expired. This becomes tougher up in Canada, as a three-year contract isn’t uncommon.

Telus will have some competition from Rogers when they announce their fourth quarter results next week. They saw a 20 percent increase year-to-year in the third quarter of 2007, while Telus declined two percent. Hopefully for Telus, Rogers doesn’t strike again.

[ReportonBusiness.com]

Posted By : Stuart
Posted at : February 18th, 2008 - 8:39 am
Filed under : Canadian Wireless