Invincible, Free Mobile beats Orange, Boygs and SFR in terms of subscriber gains in 2023.

Free Mobile crosses the 15 million subscriber mark in 2023, recruiting three times more subscribers than its competitors.

And the winning strategy is awarded…. Free mobile. The only operator not to raise prices in 2023 despite inflation, the former troublemaker is now taking advantage of its choice to never touch the price of its two historic packages, adding to its pledge to not change anything until 2027. As of 2022, the operator has maintained its position as the best recruiter in the segment. And this time, it is clear that the gap over its rivals is enormous. When publishing its annual results on March 14, Free Mobile announced that it had attracted 787,000 net new subscribers. For their part, Bouygues Telecom and Orange sold 232,000 and 214,000 mobile plans respectively. In the red, SFR lost 353,000 subscribers in the segment during the first 9 months of the year, with its annual results due next week.

Calculated this way, Free Mobile thus recruited 1.7 times more subscribers in 12 months than Orange and Bouygues combined, or 3 times more than each of them individually. On its free series and 5G 250 GB packages alone, the operator has attracted 916,000 net new subscribers. The number of subscribers to the €2 package continues to decline (-129,000 in 12 months). This very solid performance allowed it to cross the milestone of 15 million mobile subscribers.

“In the 4th quarter, we added 213,000 net new subscribers, the best professional performance during a fourth quarter, traditionally very competitive since Q4 201,” Specifies the operator.

In his eyes and it seems logical, “This very good performance finds its source in our unchanged price policy in terms of inflation, improvement in network coverage and performance in terms of speed which was confirmed by the survey annual report of ARCEP. Quality of mobile services and appetite for our convergent offering”.

Its mobile service turnover increased by 6.4% to 2.42 billion euros in 2023 (623 million euros in the 4th quarter, + 6.1%). ARPU (average revenue per subscriber) is at 12.1 euros, up 2.5% and shows a favorable mix effect: “At the end of 2023, the 4G/5G subscriber base (and free series) represents 74% of mobile. Customer base compared to 72% at the end of 2022.

This article was reprinted on the Universe Freebox website