Masmovil’s Yoigo relaunches 20 GB plan as Spanish market picks up

Yoigo, the Spanish mobile network operator that was recently acquired by Masmovil, relaunched its market-leading 20 GB smartphone plan in a new customer acquisition drive, as recent statistics from the regulator also revealed a slight pick-up on Spain’s mobile market.

Yoigo, which lacks the strong fixed-mobile propositions of its three main rivals, has relied on the 20 GB “Sinfin” tariff to retain and attract mobile subscribers, although the plan’s availability is sporadic. When it is available, 20 GB of data for €29.99 ($33.67) represents a highly competitive price in Spain, with Movistar (maximum 5 GB), Orange Spain (6 GB) and Vodafone Spain (10 GB) tending to provide smaller mobile data allowances.

Indeed, although Yoigo remains the smallest of the four MNOs, figures from the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) show that it has maintained subscriber numbers at a relatively stable level over the past year, and even increased the total number of customers to 3.25 million in July from 3.23 million in June.

In fact, after years of decline and a stagnant 2015, Spain’s mobile market has shown signs of a revival in 2016, primarily due to take-up in mobile broadband services. While the total number of mobile lines increased by 1.1 per cent to 51.14 million in July, the number of lines with both mobile voice and broadband services increased by 7.5 per cent to 38.8 million.

In terms of voice and broadband services, Telefonica’s Movistar remains in the lead -- but only just. It had 11.33 million lines in July, compared to 11.1 million at Orange Spain, 10.5 million at Vodafone Spain and 2.97 million at Yoigo. When looking at all mobile lines including voice only, Movistar has a stronger lead with 15.3 million lines compared to 14 million at Orange and 13 million at Vodafone.

Although Yoigo remains a minnow in the Spanish mobile market, its acquisition by Masmovil places it in a different context with a fixed-mobile future.

"The acquisition of Yoigo (and Pepephone) will allow Masmovil to strengthen and consolidate its position as [the] fourth national telecommunications operator in Spain with 4.2 million mobile clients and around 70,000 broadband clients," Masmovil said in June.

Masmovil has also previously acquired MVNO Pepephone, which has around 460,000 mobile customers and 35,000 ADSL clients, and also picked up some of Jazztel's fibre assets following Orange's acquisition of the fixed-line player. It now services 750,000 building units with its FTTH network and is targeting 2.3 million in three years. It also has access to Jazztel's DSL network for at least four years.

For more:
- see the CNMC statistics from July 2016
- see this CNMC release (in Spanish)

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