Spain's No. 4 operator Yoigo joined its larger rivals by offering bundles of fixed and mobile services as part of ongoing efforts to attract and retain companies in the hard-fought mobile market.
Following its recent network-sharing deal with Telefónica, TeliaSonera-owned Yoigo is also now offering the service bundles under the Fusion brand that was originally launched by Telefónica's Movistar. Starting at €34 ($46) per month, Yoigo customers have three plans to choose from, and also have the option of adding extra mobile lines to their plans.
Under the network-sharing deal, Telefónica is also using Yoigo's LTE network to enable it to offer LTE services as it builds out its own LTE network.
Led by Movistar's Fusion plans, Spanish operators were early adopters of the strategy to offer multi-service bundles of fixed and mobile voice and data plans. Both Vodafone Spain and Orange Spain also now have their own multi-service offerings.
Multi-service plans are popular with operators because they are believed to encourage customer loyalty and make it more difficult for customers to churn if they use more than one service from the same operator. Operators in Spain have been suffering from the effects of a severe recession that has seen consumers switch to cheaper plans or abandon their mobile subscriptions altogether, and have therefore been seeking alternative ways to generate revenue.
According to Reuters, there were some indications in August that the Spanish market is recovering slightly after mobile subscriptions increased for the fourth month in succession, rising by 5,536. However, the focus is still on cheaper deals and both Telefónica and Vodafone continued to shed subscribers in August.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Yoigo release
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