TELUS TV subscriber base up 17,000 in 1Q 2019

TELUS TV net additions of 17,000 increased by 11,000 over the same quarter a year ago due to a lower customer churn rate from stronger retention efforts and higher gross additions from our diverse product offerings

VANCOUVER — TELUS Corporation today released its unaudited results for the first quarter of 2019.

In the quarter, we added 99,000 new wireless, Internet and TELUS TV customers, up 33,000 or 50 per cent over the same quarter a year ago. The higher net additions included 11,000 mobile phones, 49,000 mobile connected devices, 22,000 Internet subscribers and 17,000 TELUS TV customers. Our total wireless subscriber base of 9.7 million is up 4.9 per cent over the last twelve months, reflecting a 3.1 per cent increase in our mobile phones subscriber base to 8.5 million and a 19 per cent increase to our connected devices subscriber base to 1.3 million. Our Internet connections of 1.9 million are up 7.4 per cent and our TELUS TV subscriber base stands at 1.1 million.

TELUS TV net additions were 11,000 year over year. Our continued focus on expanding our addressable high-speed Internet and Optik TV® footprint, connecting more homes and businesses directly to fibre, growing our diverse product offerings, and bundling these services together, as well as our ongoing focus on putting our customers first, resulted in a lower customer churn rate and contributed to combined Internet and TV subscriber growth of 137,000 or 4.8% over the last 12 months. We had made TELUS PureFibre® available to approximately 63% of our broadband footprint by March 31, 2019. As well, residential voice net losses improved by 31.3% due to our expanding fibre footprint and bundled product offerings, and the success of our stronger retention efforts, including lower-priced offerings.

                                                Quarterly    Mar
                        ---------------------------------    YTD  Annual
thousands (000s)        Q1/19  Q4/18  Q3/18  Q2/18  Q1/18   2019    2018
                        -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  ------
TV subscribers*         1,110  1,093  1,069  1,051  1,104  1,110   1,093
TV subscriber net adds     17     24     18     15      6     17      63

* Effective April 1, 2018 and on a prospective basis, we have adjusted cumulative subscriber connections to remove approximately 68,000 TELUS TV subscribers as we have ceased marketing our Satellite TV product.