Bell parent BCE reported its second quarter results on Thursday, and the numbers show a familiar pattern for Canadian wireless: fewer people switching carriers, but each customer bringing in less money.
The company added 41,594 postpaid mobile phone customers in the quarter, down 6.6 per cent from the 44,547 it added a year earlier. The company blamed a quieter market with fewer aggressive promo offers, along with slower population growth in Canada.
Postpaid churn, meaning the share of customers leaving each month, came in at 1.02 per cent, an improvement of four basis points and Bell’s lowest quarterly level in three years.
Prepaid went the other direction. Bell added just 16,033 prepaid customers, compared to 49,932 a year ago, which it pinned on fewer international students and customers moving to postpaid. Bell finished the quarter with 10,380,265 mobile phone customers, essentially flat year over year.
As for ARPU, or average revenue per user, it fell 2.3 per cent to $56.30 from $57.61. Bell gave two reasons: last year’s quarter included G7 Leaders’ Summit revenue that did not repeat, and lower wireless connection fees following the CRTC ruling that banned some junk customer fees. The CRTC ban is making an impact it seems, according to Bell.
Product revenue, mostly phones, dropped 16.3 per cent to $685 million on fewer contracted activations, more bring-your-own-device customers and fewer upgrades. Basically, Canadians are holding onto their phones longer.
Overall revenue rose 1.5 per cent to $6,176 million. Net earnings fell 2.3 per cent to $629 million, with $558 million attributable to common shareholders, or 60 cents per share.
As for internet, Bell added 54,883 fibre-to-the-home Internet customers, up 14.5 per cent, and Internet revenue grew 14.2 per cent. That total includes Ziply Fiber, the U.S. operation Bell bought in August 2025. Bell now has 4,911,422 high-speed Internet subscribers overall.
Bell Media revenue jumped 8.9 per cent to $918 million on the back of the FIFA World Cup and Crave, which saw subscriptions jump 23 per cent to 5.07 million, with streaming subscribers up 49 per cent. Bell said its World Cup coverage reached 30.5 million Canadians across TSN, RDS, CTV, Noovo and Crave.
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