José M. Rodríguez Silva

Updated Tuesday, January 23, 2024-02:39

  • Money Spaniards switch to 'naked' offers for their Internet: cheaper and simpler

The telecommunications sector in Spain will be completely transformed in 2024, but all companies in the sector have been

working for months to anticipate these

changes, with notable success in changing dynamics in several cases, such as those of

Vodafone

and

Telefónica

.

Both companies have established themselves as the big surprises in the market due to their

renewed capacity to capture new lines

in an effort to expand their customer base before the European Commission gives the green light to the merger between

Orange and MásMóvil

and creates a new leader. in the market.

Both have done it with different strategies.

On the one hand,

Vodafone has been adding tens of thousands of mobile lines for months

.

According to official data from the National Markets and Competition Commission (

CNMC

), after starting the year by losing ground until March, the company has increased every month since April with more than

400,000 new customers

until November, the last month with data. .

This is because the company is being able to capture a significant number of the new lines that are created in the market [there are 1.81 million more lines than at the beginning of the year], which helps it compensate for the loss of clients in portability, where it continues to present a negative balance.

As a result of this, the company has even temporarily surpassed Orange as the

second operator with the highest

market share in the mobile segment with 22.08% of the lines compared to 21.87% of the oranges, a situation that will be reversed once complete the merger.

For its part,

Movistar

, which also keeps its finger on the pulse in mobile acquisition, has focused its efforts on strengthening its fiber optic offer, supported by greater flexibility when marketing the product.

As a result of this strategy, the company

added 75,000 fixed broadband lines

in the first 11 months of last year, a field in which it had suffered to maintain its share in recent years due to the attack by other operators and the low cost.

However, these figures place

Movistar

only behind

MásMóvil

(+100,000 lines) and the category of 'other operators', of which

Digi

is the largest exponent and which totals almost half a million registrations, when it comes to attracting customers. .

In the strategy of the Spanish operator and the British there is a common factor: the importance of the second brand: both

O2

for Movistar and especially

Lowi

for Vodafone are turning out to be key tools to compete in a market that is increasingly divided between

premium

clients , where

Movistar It is the dominant brand

, and customers are guided by price, a playing field full of aggressive actors where both companies are developing despite the damage it causes to the average price per customer (ARPU) of their invoices.

In this scenario,

O2

presents, for example, one of the most attractive fiber optic offers without added lines with 1 Gbps for just over 31 euros, while Lowi offers until the end of January 30 GB of data and 5G for less than ten euros.

ORANGE AND MASMOVIL, WAITING

In parallel with the performance of these two companies,

MásMóvil

has maintained the tone, holding on as an alternative to

Digi

in a creditable second place, given the hypercompetitiveness that has been imposed in its previous recruiting ground.

In the absence of the latest data, the company is on track to end the year with

430,000 more mobile lines

than at the end of 2022 and more than 100,000 additional fiber optic customers.

For its part, Orange is at the bottom in mobile line gains with around 27,000 new lines until November, while losing around 37,000.

The commercial performance of both companies is relevant, since, once Brussels authorizes the operation, something that is practically taken for granted and will occur in less than a month,

both companies will have to recalculate the value of the operation to determine the final amounts

in the that each part in the operation will be valued, so each customer gained or lost is worth double in these circumstances.