Skip to main content

New wireless entrant Wind Mobile saw a surge in subscribers in the last fiscal quarter and now has 140,000 wireless subscribers.

The number emerged as Wind's financial backer, the Egyptian company Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, reported its third quarter financial results.

Wind, according to the release, saw subscriber growth surge by 49 per cent quarter-over-quarter - a figure much higher than that of entrenched providers, though the numbers are not comparable due to the vast differences in size between Wind and companies such as BCE Inc. and Telus Corp., which see slower, more stable growth.

Wind, a private company, does not need to report its own numbers, but publicly traded Orascom is required to reveal its results. Mobilicity and Public Mobile, both private companies that also recently launched wireless service in Canada, do not disclose their own subscriber numbers.

At the end of the second quarter, Orascom reported that Wind had picked up 100,000 subscribers - a number near the high end of analysts' expectations, though slightly off track to reach the company's goal of 1.5 million customers by the end of its third year of operation.

After posting those results, analysts pointed out that Wind may have been buying the customers with costly discounts, such as a $150 offer to subscribers joining the company from other wireless providers like Rogers Communications Inc. But Anthony Lacavera, Wind's chairman, said at the time that roughly 35 per cent of the customers had arrived on the $150 discount offer, and that the majority of users were paying the full cost of service.

Interact with The Globe