Orange has been clear on the mobile subsidy: the operator will continue on the same path as hitherto, i.e. it will maintain the assistance at the terminals both for its new subscribers and for those who are already in the company and wish to renew their equipment.
The mobile subsidy has returned to the present day thanks to the opinions expressed at the XXVI Telecommunications Congress held in Santander. A few months ago, market leaders, Movistar and Vodafonethey decided to take a step in another direction, ending the smartphone subsidy as a hook to attract new customers because it meant difficult economic amounts to assume.
However, Orange has decided to continue with its subsidy policy and the results in terms of customer acquisition in recent months have been positive. Just look at the latest monthly notes published by the CMT to see how Orange has grown in recent months while its big rivals have lost users.
The intervention of its CEO in Spain, Jean-Marc Vignolles, served to defend the decision to go ahead with subsidies on handsets to attract customers. According to him, “the disappearance of this aid would harm companies in the long term”, even if he recognized that the expenditure of operators for this strategy had reached unsustainable levels in 2011 and that it was necessary to make an adjustment to the decline in terms of price and available catalog. to the user.
Vignolles indicated that “without subsidies the market will not develop at a sufficient pace” since he considers that “subsidies “democratize” access to new mobile phones and enable faster development of mobile services. Moreover, the company insists on the fact that this aid is perfectly compatible with investments in the development of new infrastructures, which contrasts with the discourse of its competitors, which They opened the door to grants at specific timess.
Thus, Orange will pursue a strategy which has given it good results and which it sees being able to sustain with good service and its investments in infrastructure. Will the big operators eventually follow their path? His latest move allowing such aids in special cases seems to indicate this, although the payment in installments mobile phones is another formula that is gradually gaining ground in our country.