Hot Mobile keeps lead in recruitment of subscribers

The holiday season may have had a slight effect on customer churn in the cellular market, but it had no impact on the market trends. HOT Mobile Ltd. was again the leader in net subscriber recruitment (new subscribers minus lost subscribers) in October with 3,470 new subscribers, while competitor Golan Telecom Ltd. continued to lose ground, shedding 4,600 subscribers.

Most of the new subscribers recruited by HOT Mobile are attributable to the company’s NIS 49-per-month unlimited surfing bargain, which has gained the company 100,000 new subscribers since it was launched a few weeks ago.

The veteran operators recovered somewhat in October, with Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR) recruiting almost 1,000 net subscribers. Cellcom lost only 370 subscribers, while Pelephone Communications Ltd. lost over 1,000 subscribers.

Partner is recruiting fewer subscribers than Pelephone and Cellcom because it does not use marketers and retains customers mainly through 012 Mobile, the brand that it merged into itself. In terms of lost subscribers, Partner lost far fewer than both of these companies. It should be noted, however, that both of them also recruited many more subscribers than Partner.

Among the virtual companies, Telzar is continuing its ongoing recruitment campaign with great success for a small virtual operator, recruiting nearly 1,500 new subscribers. Rami Levy Communications recruited only 500 new subscribers.