You may have noticed in recent weeks that the prices of mobile plans have fallen in France. A new study carried out by the Zone ADSL&Fibre price comparator confirms this trend. In May, he even observed a “sudden drop” in prices with a drop of 8% between May 13 and June 17, 2024.
Prices fall sharply at Bouygues Telecom and SFR
The mobile sector is used to seeing traditional operators and MVNOs battle to make their offers more attractive. In recent months, however, the deployment of 5G and inflation have tended to push up the prices of mobile plans. In its new study, Zone ADSL&Fibre indicates that the Altice group is experiencing the biggest decline in the telecoms sector, with an average drop of 13%. The most significant is to the credit of the MVNO Prixtel (-22%) while RED by SFR sees the prices of its packages drop by 17%. Finally, the drop is logically less significant for the SFR brand (-1%) which has just revised its 5G packages. The operator in the red square has decided to include 5G in all its packages, without time limits.
As for Bouygues Telecom, the price trend is also significantly downward (-12%). The operator and its MVNO brands “pull out all the stops to defend their position”, as the comparator explains. The prices of NRJ Mobile packages fell by 20% and those of B&YOU decreased by (14%), while Bouygues brand offers fell by 2%.
Why are the prices of mobile plans plummeting?
The price drop at Altice can be explained by the poor results recorded by the group in the first quarter of 2024. As we reported at the end of May, SFR lost 487,000 mobile subscribers in just three months and that’s as much as overall of the year 2023. The operator then pointed out the aggressive pricing policy of its main competitors, with low-price offers. He finally chose to follow the trend by lowering his prices.
At Bouygues Telecom, these significant declines can be explained by pressing competition from Free. “At the rate of Free’s current growth, the group [Bouygues Telecom] is only 300,000 customers away from becoming last in terms of subscribers », explains Zone ADSL&Fibre. Free’s policy is also very different, since the operator is grabbing subscribers by not changing its prices. Already competitive, Free Mobile is choosing to freeze prices until 2027 and is enriching its offers. A method that “the happiness of both old and new subscribers who are multiplying”notes the study.
Finally, the leader Orange maintains prices that are relatively stable on its own packages (+2%) or those of its subsidiary Sosh (+0%). The brand low-cost has, however, chosen to expand its range and subscribers can discover the joys of 5G free of charge for a few weeks, during the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Current news: 5G and €2 packages
The study takes the opportunity to reveal the massive arrival of new €2 packages among MVNOs, such as Prixtel, Cdiscount, NRJ Mobile, Syma and even ReED by SFR. In addition, the current trend is towards the generation of 5G as we mentioned previously at SFR and Orange. Bouygues Telecom has also chosen to automatically offer the latest generation mobile network to its subscribers. Summer 2024 should mark the commercial switchover point from 4G to 5G in France.
Finally, we must keep in mind that very large disparities in the average prices of mobile plans exist among operators. This graph, proposed by Zone ADSL, confirms that Orange remains more expensive than the majority of its competitors’ offers (27.07 euros). Apart from B&You, Bouygues Telecom is also pushing prices upwards (€21.53) ahead of La Poste Mobile. For others, we see that the average price of a 140 GB package over 12 months generally remains below 14 euros per month. It even slips below 10 euros/month at Prixtel or NRJ Mobile.
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