While operators are slashing prices for Black Friday, SFR is discreetly increasing the prices of its packages. A way to reduce its debts, the group going through a serious financial crisis associated with a big loss of subscribers.
SFR is going through a really bad time in 2023! While the operator has lost hundreds of thousands of customers, Altice, its parent company, finds itself in debt to the tune of 60 billion euros, if we combine Altice International, Altice France and Altice USA – Altice France alone represents a hole of 24 billion dollars. And as if that wasn’t enough, a corruption scandal involving someone close to Patrick Drahi, the founder of Altice, further tarnishes the group’s image. The situation is so critical that Patrick Drahi is seeking to partially sell SFR for 3 billion euros. It is therefore essential for the operator to reduce its financial gap, and unfortunately it is once again the users who will have to pay the bill. Already last February, they saw their mobile and Internet bills increase from €0.69 to €0.99 per month, depending on the plans.
This week, while Black Friday is in full swing with a host of promotions, SFR is back with a new increase in prices, but this time has nothing to do with the context at the start of the year, where the operator invoked the general increase in the costs of its service, due to the war in Ukraine and the resulting surge in energy prices (see our article). A very unpleasant surprise, while other operators are slashing the prices of their packages during the big end-of-year clearance sale!
Increases at SFR: still taxing subscribers
SFR is discreetly increasing the prices of some of its subscriptions, starting with the SFR Fiber Starter plan. Described as an offer “broadband at a low price”, it allows you to benefit from a speed of 1 Gbit/s for downloading and 700 Mbit/s for downloading. Previously at €20.99 per month, it increases to €22.99 per month for the first six months – compared to twelve just a few weeks ago – before increasing to €34 per month, all with a commitment of twelve month. We are therefore seeing an increase of €2 during the promotional period without any improvement in the service.
SFR used a slightly different strategy for its no-commitment 5G plans. The operator has decided to increase its 200 GB 5G plan by 50 GB, therefore increasing it to a total envelope of 250 GB, while increasing the price by €2 per month, from 34.99 to 36.99 € per month – on the other hand, Box customers still benefit from a preferential rate of €16.99 per month. A clever technique, since this price increase is “justified” by the increase in the data envelope, while most subscribers do not use it in its entirety. In short, it’s all good for SFR!
SFR Group: a financial chasm to be filled urgently
This increase is the consequence of the operator’s new, so-called value, strategy. Indeed, as Mathieu Cocq, CEO of SFR, explained, to the Echoes, his group stops the price war and the race for subscribers to instead increase prices and retain the subscribers who earn the most. This change of direction was already illustrated last October, when the famous mention “the first twelve months” that we usually find had transformed into “the first six months”, and this on almost all packages. Thanks to this practice, SFR ensures much greater revenue at the end of the first year, while making it less and less advantageous for the user to change plans once the promotional period has passed (see our article ). Very bad news, at a time when inflation is in full swing and the French people’s wallets are dragging their feet, especially since Orange and Bouygues Telecom have done the same. And a dangerous game, particularly given the not really glorious placement of SFR in the Arcep rankings (see our article). Deplorable customer service, offers that change all the time… Subscribers are fleeing the ship…
On November 22, SFR presented its figures for the third quarter with optimism. “There is a rebound”rejoiced Mathieu Coq during a conference call with investors, reports The world. HAS Reading its commercial results, the operator seems to have managed to stem the hemorrhage on mobile seen over the past year. In reality, it inflated its mobile figures in the third quarter, thanks to subtle manipulation, to hide a further loss of subscribers. In reality, not only was the bleeding not stopped, but the operator ultimately lost no less than 118,000 mobile customers. Since the start of the year, SFR has seen 438,000 subscribers leave for the competition.
To try to fill the gap, the media and telecoms group Altice announced, on Tuesday, November 21, the sale of a 70% stake in its data center activity in France to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners . More precisely, it will transfer 257 data centers and office spaces currently operated by SFR throughout France to a new entity, called UltraEdge. The French group specifies that the infrastructure and passive equipment of the data centers will be transferred to UltraEdge, but that the servers and active equipment will remain with SFR. By selling more than two thirds of the capital, Altice France should recover a little more than 530 million euros, while retaining 30% of the capital of the new company. In addition, the operator will enter into a build-to-suit agreement with UltraEdge which is expected to generate approximately €175 million in additional revenue over the next seven years. But not sure that this will be enough…