Telus working on Public Mobile integration

Telus Corp. is “assessing” the pricing plans it makes available to Public Mobile subscribers as it works to migrate those customers onto its LTE network this year, the company’s chief commercial officer said. “We are assessing Public Mobile pricing right now and looking at product offerings,” Joe Natale, Telus’ executive vice-president and chief commercial officer, said Thursday in a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s fourth quarter results. “We have made a commitment to keep the $19 unlimited voice plan in the market through 2014, but we will be looking at all the various aspects of Public Mobile rate plans and making sure we strike the right balance between doing what’s right for Public Mobile customers and putting forth a set of economic considerations with the Telus organization.” Telus, an incumbent mobile provider, purchased new entrant carrier Public Mobile for an undisclosed price in a deal that closed in November. The company also twice tried last year to acquire Mobilicity, another new entrant, though Industry Canada blocked those proposed deals due to rules that prevented incumbent carriers from acquiring Mobilicity’s spectrum licences until earlier this week. In the conference call Thursday, Natale said he has assembled a “comprehensive integration team” to examine and help integrate Public Mobile’s operations into its existing wireless business. He said Telus plans to migrate former Public Mobile subscribers to Telus’s CDMA network shortly, before later migrating those customers to its more advanced networks by the end of the year. “Our plan right now is to migrate the Public Mobile customers to CDMA and eventually to HSPA and LTE by the end of 2014,” he said. “Our goal is to free up the spectrum in that period of time.” In its quarterly financial report released Thursday, Telus said net earnings in the three months that ended Dec. 31 were $290 million, up from $263 million in the same period a year earlier. Earnings adjusted for non-recurring items such as restructuring costs and income-tax-related adjustments, were $301 million, up from $267 million a year earlier. Operating revenue was up 3.4 per cent from the year before to $2.95 billion in the quarter, Telus said. There was a 4.1 per cent increase in revenue from the wireless network, and a 3.4 per cent boost in wireline revenue. On the wireless side, the company reported a 14 per cent increase in data revenue, attributed to subscriber growth and more data usage as more people used smartphones. It also reported average revenue per user was up 1.5 per cent to $61.86 a month, not including Public Mobile. Telus said it added 91,000 net mobile subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2013, which represented a net gain of 113,000 post-paid subscribers, and a loss of 22,000 pre-paid customers. It said it had 7.8 million wireless subscribers at the end of 2013, including about 6.8 million post-paid customers. In terms of its wireline business, Telus said data revenue was up 10.5 per cent as TV subscriptions climbed 20 per cent from a year earlier to 815,000, and as high-speed Internet subscriptions rose 5.2 per cent to 1.4 million. Telus reported a seven per cent drop in its residential lines, which it attributed to more people using wireless-only or turning to online-phone options. Business lines were down 1.7 per cent, it said. — With reporting by Nicholas Kyonka at nkyonka@thewirereport.ca and reporting and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Telus working on Public Mobile integration

News | February 13, 2014

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