Prepaid subscribers are finicky, always looking for the best deals and will not hesitate to switch network at a whim. They select their provider based on price, data offer and coverage, every three months we can see the prepaid sector movement from one telco  to another.

Digi has been experiencing subscriber migration on a large scale since the first quarter of this year. Starting the year with a loss of close to half a million subscribers from the quarter before, the telco managed to recover half of that mid year 2017 only to lose them again in the last three months. Its latest financial reports show the operator having 11.852 million users compared to 12.299 million at the end of 2016. The movement of prepaid subscribers is common among the big three’s, both Maxis and Celcom have been facing similar erosion on their base. Beneficiaries of the migration is likely to be new comers U Mobile and Webe now known as Unifi Mobile who have been disrupting the status quo with exciting plans.

Postpaid In Focus

On the bright side, Digi added new postpaid customers and despite the loss of prepaid users, overall revenue was not impacted in fact there was an increase namely due to the high postpaid income generated. Data usage or internet users also climbed to over 70% of the total base standing at 8.538 million with LTE users being the bulk at 5.7 million. Average revenue per unit for postpaid came down by RM 1 to RM77, a far cry from Maxis which has the highest ARPU in the industry.

With the loss of prepaid users,we could expect Digi to retaliate with new plans having lost its proposition as the most affordable plan to new comer U Mobile. The spectrum re-farming by MCMC to Digi will also play a bigger role come next year, when the telco can focus on higher penetration for its 4G LTE and get more coverage for indoor locations.