The telecommunications operator DIGI ended the last fiscal year with a record result in attracting consumers in the Spanish market, consolidating its position in the European connectivity sector. The company recorded a net volume of 994 thousand portabilities, divided between fixed broadband and mobile telephony services. The commercial advance resulted in a total base of more than 10.8 million subscribers, representing growth of 28.4% compared to the previous period. The strategy based on low-cost packages attracted a significant portion of users from competing companies.
Despite the strong pace of acquisition of new lines, the corporation faces a complex scenario in relation to customer loyalty. Operational reports indicate high subscriber turnover, a phenomenon known in the telecommunications market as abandonment rate. In the broadband segment, this indicator reached 15.8% at the end of the year. The metric indicates that a considerable portion of individuals who subscribe to promotional plans choose to migrate to other providers after the initial conditions have expired or when testing the infrastructure offered.
The cancellation rate increased by three percentage points compared to the previous twelve months. The volume of losses in a short space of time requires the sales team to maintain a fast pace of new acquisitions just to replace deactivated lines. Essa constant entry and exit dynamics increases the acquisition cost per customer and puts pressure on the operation’s profit margins in the long term, requiring adjustments in service provision.
Expansion of the subscriber base
The corporation added more than 2.39 million new contracts throughout the year, surpassing direct rivals in specific niches. In the cell phone sector, the brand reached 7.27 million active lines, which represents an increase of 1.4 million accesses in just one year. The continued growth in the mobile area demonstrates acceptance of the aggressive rates offered to the end consumer.
In the fiber optic market, the customer base reached 2.58 million, with the addition of 632 thousand new connected homes. Esse volume of fixed accesses positioned the company as the third largest residential internet provider in Espanha. The penetration of high-speed broadband is one of the pillars for offering convergent services, which combine fixed internet and telephony in a single bill.
Turnover dynamics in our own infrastructure
Consumer evasion from the operator’s proprietary network has seen a significant increase in recent years of operation. The cancellation rate went from 9.6% in the last quarter of 2021 to 14.3% in the same period of the recently concluded year. Historical data reveals a trend of difficulty in retention as the total user base expands across the territory.
The increase of almost five percentage points reflects the operational difficulties inherent to an accelerated expansion process. The temporary overload of routing systems, the need for constant technical adaptation and possible bottlenecks in technical support directly affect the perception of quality of service provided to residential and corporate subscribers.
In areas where the company uses third-party networks to provide connection, instability is even greater, with the abandonment rate reaching 23.3%. Nesses local packages, the packages sold can cost up to 10 euros more, which reduces competitiveness and facilitates user migration to operators that have established local infrastructure and more flexible prices.
Network and spectrum investments
To sustain the pace of net additions and improve signal quality, the company allocated 468 million euros to capital expenditure. The amount represents an increase of 63% in relation to the previous financial cycle, demonstrating the corporate effort to modernize transmission equipment and expand simultaneous traffic capacity.
The financial resources were allocated as a priority to the construction of our own very high-speed fiber optic network. The strategy aims to reduce dependence on infrastructure leased from larger conglomerates, such as Telefónica, ensuring greater autonomy in formulating prices and managing the broadband offered to end customers.
In addition to the fixed network, the operator invested heavily in acquiring mobile spectrum frequencies to develop independent cellular coverage. The transition to the mobile operator model with its own network is considered essential to guarantee technical stability and offer more robust data packages without relying on continuous national roaming agreements.
Infrastructural autonomy allows for tighter control over data traffic management and the implementation of new transmission technologies. The development of exclusive towers and antennas is part of the strategic plan to consolidate the brand as a complete infrastructure provider, capable of managing all stages of the user connection.
Financial performance and revenue
Despite the high subscriber turnover, the operator’s financial indicators demonstrated extreme solidity in the period analyzed. Revenue from operations in Spanish territory exceeded the mark of 929 million euros, which is equivalent to growth of 19% in the annual comparison. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization reached 175 million euros, an increase of 15%. The numbers confirm that the volume strategy compensates, in the short term, for the losses generated by customer evasion, keeping the corporate balance sheet in the black.
Positive operational cash generation provides the necessary support for the continuity of the physical expansion plan. The company’s management projects to surpass the barrier of 1 billion euros in total revenues in the next fiscal cycle. Para To achieve this revenue target, the corporation maintains a budget of approximately 400 million euros allocated to civil engineering works, installation of underground cabling and expansion of data processing capacity in its regional control centers.
Customer service strategies
Maintaining leadership in portability for five consecutive years highlights the company’s commercial aggressiveness, but the sustainability of the business model requires substantial improvements in customer relationships. Para mitigate the cancellation rate and increase the satisfaction index, the operator ended the year with a workforce of more than 11 thousand direct professionals. The main objective of expanding the number of employees is to strengthen direct service channels, reduce waiting times at call centers and speed up the dispatch of technicians to resolve physical faults in homes. The corporate strategy includes the systematic opening of its own physical stores in several provinces, providing a face-to-face point of contact for resolving administrative issues, equipment exchanges and specialized technical support. The physical presence on high-traffic commercial streets also works as an institutional marketing tool to attract consumers who prefer traditional and humanized service to the detriment of exclusively digital and automated channels.
Movements in the telecommunications sector
The European connectivity market is going through a period of intense restructuring, with operators seeking to balance the offer of affordable plans with the need to monetize heavy investments in new generation infrastructure. The ability to retain the subscriber base after the promotional period has become the main competitive differentiator between companies in the sector, requiring constant innovations in the provision of services.
Fierce competition forces corporations to diversify their portfolios, including bundled digital security and cloud storage services. The loyalty of the modern consumer directly depends on the stability of the connection, the speed of repair in case of signal drops and the transparency in the collection of monthly bills, factors that determine the user’s permanence in the provider’s active base.