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In the first half of 2018, the five largest carriers — Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc., Telus Corp., Shaw Communications Inc.’s Freedom Mobile and Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron — collectively added 745,476 wireless subscribers, up 39.7 per cent from 533,460 in the same period last year. (These figures include Shaw’s results even though it reports from December through May.)

Yet average revenue per user (ARPU) growth fell to about 2.1 per cent in the second quarter based on a weighted average, Desjardins analyst Maher Yaghi noted to clients. That’s down from an industry average of around three per cent per quarter for the past two years, according to a report by Scotiabank analyst Jeff Fan.

“Average billings per user is declining despite continued strength in subscriber additions, which in our view indicates that competition has increased in the Canadian wireless market,” Yaghi noted to clients.

If each customer is spending less — bigger data buckets have become more common in the largest provinces since Freedom sparked a brief promotional war during the 2017 holiday shopping season — the number of new subscriptions matters more.

“In a moderating (average revenue per user) environment where we do well on lifetime revenue given our churn, we look for growth by market expansion,” Telus chief executive Darren Entwistle said in a quarterly call with analysts in August.

Entwistle and his competitors expect that expansion to continue since Canada has relatively fewer wireless subscribers for its population compared to its other Western countries.