Given Digi’s last 9-month net profit soared to €397.1m, hopes are high for the operator to post solid full-year results later this month
According to Spain’s National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC), of the new fixed broadband lines added last November, more than 75% were attributed to Digi. The operator’s market share also surpassed 10%, reaching 10.35%. In November, Spain’s competitive broadband sector added 72,814 new lines, bringing the total to 18,449,270, which equates to 38 lines per 100 inhabitants, up from 36 the previous year. Fibre optic lines (FTTH) grew by 97,580, reaching 16.4 million, representing 89% of the total. Movistar, Vodafone, and MasOrange held 84.5% of the total fixed broadband lines, which makes Digi’s gains even more interesting.
In December Digi extended its TV offering, extending the service to all Spanish provinces and offering more than 100 channels with the likes of Disney, Warner, AMC, Sony, NBCUniversal and Paramount at a pretty low cost of €7 per month. Despite its attractive offers in Spain, the operator said last results that the country was still generating the highest ARPU of its operations.
Digi is just getting started in Portugal after taking over Cabonitel from telecommunications group Lorca for €150m. That deal also included the acquisition of the target’s subsidiary Nowo Communications, Portugal’s fourth biggest mobile and fixed services operator.
Meanwhile, in Belgium, Digital signed a five-year national roaming agreement with Proximus to launch with 4G while it builds out a 5G network. The operator wants to achieve 30% 5G population coverage by the end of 2025 and establish a network of 4,500 sites by the end of this decade. The Belgium launch followed the typical low cost entry – the operator launched with a cut-price mobile tariff priced at €5 per month for 15 GB of data, alongside a fixed broadband offering at €10 per month for a 500 Mbps full-fibre connection.
According to Ookla, Digi has introduced ‘DIGI Fiber’, bringing its signature aggressive pricing to the FTTH market. Launching with a limited footprint in select Brussels suburbs, DIGI Fiber offers download speeds of up to 10 Gbps for as little as €20 per month. It plans to scale this fibre footprint rapidly, as it has done in Spain, targeting 2 million households within two years.
The RAN in Spain
Digi has also made gains in mobile according to the CNMC data. The number of mobile lines reached 61.2 million, marking a 2.8% year-on-year increase. Movistar, MasOrange, and Vodafone accounted for 87.8% of the total. A total of 518,506 mobile numbers were ported, a 0.3% decrease year-on-year. Collectively, MVNOs, Movistar, and Digi experienced positive net gains, while Vodafone and MasOrange lost lines.
Vodafone includes data from Ono and MasOrange includes data from Orange and Grupo Masmovil as of April 2024. Overall, there were 53.91 million mobile broadband voice lines, a 3.7% year-on-year increase. Machine-to-Machine (M2M) lines increased by 12.2% compared to the previous year, totalling 12.82 million.
