almost 760,000 in a month
The war of telephone operators marks a new milestone. During the month of October, 758,476 mobile company changes were made, which represents a new historical record. Never before had so many mobile portabilities been carried out in a single month and it means exceeding the data of the previous record by more than 9,000 changes, set precisely a month earlier. Added to the fixed lines, the volume of changes was around one million for the second consecutive month.
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In the 10 months of 2020 in which there is data from the National Markets and Competition Commission, there have been more than 5.4 million changes in mobile operator and 1.8 million in fixed. Compared with the same period of the previous year, 2019, the change of mobile company has fallen by 11%, although this data is affected because during the state of alarm the changes of telephone company were paralyzed by law. Since this limitation was lifted, the 2020 rate is even higher than that of 2019.
The balance between entries and exits of each operator once again left the MásMóvil group as the best unemployed in the sector during the month of October, according to data collected by the CNMC. The operator has gained almost 18,000 new customers in one month, compared to the loss of 17,610 from Telefónica, 24,400 from Vodafone or 13,500 from Orange. Statistics show strong gains for Mobile Virtual Operators, which in October registered an increase of more than 37,600 clients. In this field, operators such as Digi or Euskaltel stand out, although they do not appear in the CNMC statistics with their own name, in the sector they are pointed out as the two with the highest growth in 2020.
In the 10 months for which there is data from the CNMC, Telefónica accumulates a loss of 203,000 mobile lines, Vodafone has gained 33,000, Orange leaves 403,000 mobile phone lines and MásMóvil accumulates a gain of 287,000 customers. MVNOs, such as Euskaltel or Digi among others, have gained almost 285,000 customers between January and October of last year.
Despite the historical increase in operator changes, the CNMC points out that during the month of October 11,000 mobile lines were lost in Spain compared to a month earlier. Of course, it represents an increase of 1.2% compared to the same figure in October 2019. The month closed with 54.9 million active mobile lines in Spain.
In October, almost 74,000 fixed broadband lines were added to a total of 15.7 million. The total of FTTH fiber optic lines exceeded 11.3 million. 40.4% of these fiber optic lines correspond to Movistar, with a fleet of 4.6 million lines. At an annual level, compared to October 2019, the increase of 1.4 million FTTH lines stands out compared to the loss of 0.8 million lines with DSL technology. In Spain there are 33.2 fixed broadband lines for every 100 inhabitants. The three main operators - Movistar, Orange (including Jazztel) and Vodafone (including Ono) - account for 83% of the total fixed broadband lines.
