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My curious mind

steveb11
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

I ask this question purely out of curiosity.

 

Does anyone know or have a reasonable guess as to how many customers Public Mobile has? And where would that rank compared to other Canadian providers?

14 REPLIES 14

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

I think it would be reported as Telus prepaid if anything 

Durnford16
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I honestly have no idea. But i try to get all my friends and family to sign up. The amount of money i have saved is crazy and my only regret is that i didn't sign up for public earlier

CountyDownIeUk
Mayor / Maire

@steveb11 

 

I would suggest you look for:

1. A current Telus prospectus

2. Most current annual report 

3. Number of members in the community, but that would be a flawed number. 

 

I don’t think both Koodo and Public Mobile Numbers would be combined as each entity should be reported for a number of very obvious reasons. 

 

steveb11
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Korth  Thanks for the excellent reply. Appreciate the context.

Telus reported 9.128 million mobility subscribers in Q3 2021. And reported that "approximately half" of these (so approximately 4.564 million) were Telus Mobility subscribers.

 

Koodo Mobile had a serious data breach in 2020 which could have affected "3 million" and "nearly 75%" of their subscribers. Which suggests they had around 4 million subscribers at that time.

 

The remainder would have to be Public Mobile subscribers. Roughly 564,000 total. Give or take a lot, maybe.

 

These data span several years in an ever-changing market which has seen one or two covid recessions, closed borders, a surprising amount of impressive (and expensive) new phone tech, the giant smartphone brands (Apple and Samsung) reporting lower sales than previous years, and the Rogers rollout of 5G. So they're only loose estimates.

Although I suspect that more and more people have been downsizing costs on their luxuries and lifestyles (which always starts with finding a cheaper phone bill first) so maybe third-tier operators like Public Mobile have seen a surge in subscribers - especially compared vs the ripoff prices offered by Telus Mobility and the other first-tiers. Public Mobile certainly seems to get a lot of response every time they run another one of their endless stream of "for new customers only" promos, even the bad ones get pages of questions and comments and support requests.

esjliv
Mayor / Maire

@steveb11 wrote:

I ask this question purely out of curiosity.

 

Does anyone know or have a reasonable guess as to how many customers Public Mobile has? And where would that rank compared to other Canadian providers?


@steveb11 - it is an interesting question. Sorry, I don't have a guess. 

I found that 2013 stat, but that is oldie isn't it. Then a 2018 CRTC report, but lumping subscribers together.

 

Only these specific companies would have that stat at any given time. These companies must have a high churn rate. So subscriber details are very dynamic. 

 

If you know someone who works in corporate Telus/Public Mobile maybe they can grab some internal quarterly report. 🙂

HALIMACS
Mayor / Maire

@steveb11 

 

If account numbering started with 1.....0000001, then i can confirm that the numbering is now in excess of 1....2650000.

 

Does that mean there have been at least 2.65 million separate accounts? (a good percentage which are surely no longer active)

 

No idea... guess it depends what the first account number was and how many no longer have service. 

 

LeePublic
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

I remember sometimes Bell would mention Lucky Mobile in their quarterly shareholder posting, they would say stuff like "prepaid subscribers are growing rapidly due to the success of our prepaid brand, Lucky Mobile". Just paraphrasing. But never for PM and koodo.

steveb11
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Thanks @darlicious . That was interesting.

darkomega
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

It would be hard to get that data these days since its part of Telus, but they might mention it during an investor call in passing, but I don't think they report any of the owned sub-brands as separate these days, it looks better for shareholders if it's one big number reported by Telus.

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@steveb11 

This thread by @Nezgar has some insights on pm subscribership that may satisfy your curiosity.

 

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/Community-Registered-Users-Statistics/td-...

 

 

 

 

To contact customer support click below:

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/22437

To pre-verify your account include your full name, address, email, phone # and 4 digit acct pin #

Hi @steveb11 , PM Community member  number is sequential.  It is around 229000 now.  But some of these members are fake accounts, some left.  On the other hand , some never create a Communitu account.  So, maybe I will take a wild guess that 20% of these are active. Maybe 57,000?

steveb11
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

I saw it reported as 280,000 customers when Telus purchased PM in 2013. Just curious how that has changed in nine years.

darkomega
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

That number would be lumped in with Koodo as well when Telus reports their subscriber numbers.

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