Chief financial officer
"You need to have a return on assets at some point," he said in an interview after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings.
"Giving away or getting access to an asset at discounted rates doesn't promote you to go and build more."
A day earlier, the parent company of
The CRTC announced last November it would temporarily require large telephone companies, namely Bell and Telus, to provide competitors with access to their fibre-to-the-home networks in
The decision was meant to stimulate competition for internet services, as the CRTC said at the time its review could potentially make that direction permanent and apply it to other provinces. The regulator is hold a hearing next week as part of that review.
Bell responded by reducing its network investment plans by
French said Telus would continue as scheduled with its own network investments but it is reviewing "economics and returns" on an ongoing basis.
"Depending on how things roll out over the next little bit, we may make some other choices," he said.
"But at the moment ... we've been able to execute very well in a dynamic market and we will proceed as planned, unless there are anything that would change how we look at economics and how we look at our ability to build that out on affordability."
Telus had announced its own 6,000 job cuts last August in order to adapt to a “rapidly transforming industry,” saying at the time that issues such as regulation and competition prompted the need to reduce its payroll. The company said the restructuring would cost
French said Friday that those cuts were 75 to 80 per cent complete by the end of last year, however some restructuring costs would spill over to the first quarter of 2024.
Telus reported fourth-quarter net income attributable to common shares of
Operating revenue and other income totalled
In the fourth quarter, Telus said it saw a total of 404,000 net customer additions across its services.
The company's 126,000 net mobile phone subscriber additions in the quarter was up 13 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier. But Telus' monthly churn rate for mobile subscribers — a measure of subscribers who cancelled their service — was 1.40 per cent, up from 1.22 per cent during its previous fourth quarter, which it said was largely due to heightened seasonal promotional activity.
Telus’ mobile phone average revenue per user was
French said Telus is "not banking on price increases" for 2024 in light of that decline in revenue per user.
"I don't expect the competitiveness to slow at all. If anything, it continues to be very intense and it's very difficult to increase prices in an intense competitive market," he said.
Recent price hikes by other telecoms have attracted attention from federal politicians and backlash from some customers.
Members of the
Despite no immediate plans to follow suit, French said he hopes
Cellular costs have declined more than 47 per cent over the past five years in contrast to an overall inflation increase of 19 per cent for the same period, according to data compiled by the
He said Telus is asking for "transparency and consistency" from the regulator as it makes its decisions.
"There's always a good time to, say, tout when we apparently are doing something wrong, but we don't get the credit we deserve for how we've helped fuel the economy and how prices are coming down," said French.
"The competitive nature of our industry is very, very intense and I think that's underestimated."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published
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