Bell Canada Enterprises
(BCE) has posted total operating revenue of CAD5.345 billion (USD4.061 billion) in Q3 2015, up by 2.9% year-on-year, while quarterly adjusted EBITDA was up 3.4% to CAD2.187 billion on positive growth across all Bell operating segments, reflecting y-o-y increases of 8.3% at Bell Wireless, 1.1% at Bell Wireline and 0.5% at Bell Media. Q3 net customer additions reached 68,000 in IPTV, 58,000 in fixed broadband and 77,655 post-paid mobile customers, while Bell also reported net losses of 19,112 pre-paid mobile subscribers, 41,994 satellite TV customers, and 108,076 fixed voice lines in the three-month period. At 30 September 2015 BCE served a total of 8,183,367 wireless customers, up 1.8% from Q3 2014; total TV subscribers of 2,700,710, up 3.9% (including 1,108,699 IPTV customers, an increase of 29.3%); 3,374,239 broadband internet subscribers, up 4.0%; and total fixed local access lines of 6,795,576, a decrease of 5.9% over twelve months. Bell also claimed that the results make it Canada’s largest pay-TV provider by subscribers.
Bell Canada’s direct fibre (‘Gigabit’) broadband network footprint has now passed two million homes in Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic region, after BCE invested fixed/mobile network CAPEX of CAD927 million in July-September 2015. CAPEX focus included expansion of ‘Gigabit Fibe’ infrastructure in the City of Toronto and other urban locations, the continued expansion of Bell’s nationwide 4G LTE wireless network, the rollout of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) services, and increases in fixed and wireless network capacity to support higher speeds and growing data usage.
Thanks to TeleGeography for the article.