Celcom has reported its financial status for 2017 and while the telco recorded an increase in overall revenue, it continues to lose subscribers stemming from the highly volatile prepaid segment with competitive pricing and mixed consumer perception.
For the year ended December, the third largest mobile operator had a total subscriber base of 9.5 million compared to 10.5 million in 2016. Of the 1 million that moved elsewhere, the biggest drop came from the prepaid segment losing over 870k customers, a substantial amount but much less from when it lost 1.8 million in 2016. Its current prepaid base stands at 6.7 million a stark comparison in its heyday of 10.2 million back in 2013. As for postpaid things are not rosy either, after introducing a plethora of innovative packages and added services for customers, Celcom could not stem the migration losing another 130k to now 2.8 million subscribers. In the 4 years, the company has lost a total of 3.6 million users having a peak base of 13.1 million in 2013. People in the know attribute the factors for the churn to be mostly due to new and aggressive competition, legacy network infrastructure and slow to react to market changes.
Plans in Place
However, parent company Axiata brought in new leadership in September 2016 to reorganise the crown jewel under its group and steady the ship back in course. Michael Kuehner a former Siemens Malaysia CEO has been working in turning things around at Celcom strategising a series of initiatives starting from internal operations to network roll-outs. He faces similar challenges when Morten Lundal first took over the beleaguered Maxis 5 years ago, who now leaves the company in a much enviable position.
Despite the loss of subscribers, Celcom has managed to increase its data usage among its users to 70% with 525 million GB with an average GB data use of 6.7 per user and an increase in ARPU of 45 leads to a better overall revenue for the telco. This are early signs of Kuehners plans taking effect, it is slow and painful but his next task surely has to be stopping the migration of subscribers, a rate of 10% a year is not healthy no matter which way you look at.
