Telecom operators are paying hundreds of rupees or dollars to acquire customers, but the real battle in 2026 is shifting from achieving the lowest customer acquisition cost to generating the highest lifetime value from every subscriber.
Customer acquisition cost, or CAC, is becoming an important telecom KPI as operators focus on profitable subscriber growth rather than simply maximizing customer numbers.
The acquisition bill can include dealer commissions, sales commissions, advertising, handset subsidies and promotional discounts. But operators do not disclose CAC using a common methodology, making direct comparisons difficult.
Available 2026 data provides important insights into the acquisition economics of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Rogers, TELUS and Deutsche Telekom.
The biggest lesson is that CAC cannot be analyzed independently. Operators need to evaluate acquisition spending alongside gross additions, churn, ARPU, customer lifetime and cross-selling opportunities.
Jio, Airtel and Vi Reveal India’s Acquisition-Cost Gap
India provides some of the clearest indicators of what operators spend to win subscribers.
A June 2026 Motilal Oswal analysis estimated Reliance Jio’s cost per gross subscriber addition at ₹293 in FY26, down from ₹334 in FY25. The calculation was based on Jio’s selling and distribution expenditure.
Jio ended March 2026 with more than 524 million customers, including 268 million 5G users. Its fixed broadband customer base reached 27.1 million.
Jio also carried 241 exabytes of data traffic during FY26, up 30.8 percent, showing the enormous scale across which its customer-acquisition investment is being monetized.
Airtel and Vodafone Idea provide another comparison, though their figures measure dealer commissions rather than exactly the same all-in CAC metric used in the Jio estimate.
A September 2026 analysis based on Jefferies data estimated Vodafone Idea’s dealer commission at ₹396 per gross subscriber addition, compared with ₹310 for Bharti Airtel.
Vi’s figure was therefore around 28 percent higher than Airtel’s.
Vi’s dealer commissions represented 8.2 percent of sales in FY26, roughly twice Airtel’s level, while Vi’s overall selling and marketing expenses reached 10.5 percent of sales.
These figures show why customer acquisition economics are becoming important for Indian telecom operators.
Network Quality Can Determine Customer Acquisition Cost
The Vi-Airtel comparison highlights an important relationship between network investment and customer acquisition.
Vi increased network capex to ₹108 billion in FY26, compared with ₹18.5 billion in FY24, as it expanded 4G coverage and accelerated 5G deployment.
Better coverage and network experience could eventually reduce the amount Vi needs to spend on dealer incentives and customer acquisition.
This creates an important telecom economics cycle:
Network investment → better customer experience → stronger organic acquisition → lower incentives → lower churn → better customer economics.
An operator with weaker coverage may need to compensate through higher commissions, discounts or promotions.
CAC is therefore not purely a marketing metric. It can also reflect the competitiveness of the underlying network.
Verizon Reduces Handset Subsidies
The U.S. market demonstrates another major component of telecom acquisition economics: smartphone subsidies.
Verizon reported 184,000 postpaid phone net additions in Q2 2026, its best consumer second-quarter performance in five years.
At the same time, equipment revenue dropped almost 20 percent, or more than $1.2 billion, primarily because of lower upgrade volumes and Verizon’s decision to reduce spending on device subsidies.
Verizon also generated 73,000 core prepaid net additions and 348,000 broadband net additions during the quarter.
The operator expects 750,000 to 1 million retail postpaid phone net additions during 2026.
Verizon’s strategy suggests that operators do not necessarily need expensive smartphone promotions to generate subscriber growth.
If Verizon can reduce device subsidies while maintaining subscriber momentum, the return on its customer-acquisition spending should improve.
AT&T Uses Convergence to Increase Customer Value
AT&T illustrates a different strategy.
The operator added 432,000 postpaid phone customers in Q2 2026, while postpaid phone churn remained relatively low at 0.86 percent.
AT&T also added 646,000 consumer and business internet customers, including 367,000 fiber and 279,000 fixed wireless customers.
Wireless service revenue growth was partially offset by promotional discounts associated with subscriber additions, demonstrating that customer growth still carries acquisition costs.
However, AT&T is using convergence to improve the economics of those customers.
Around 42.5 percent of households using AT&T’s advanced home internet services also subscribe to AT&T wireless.
That changes the CAC equation.
A customer acquired through a wireless promotion may subsequently generate fiber or fixed wireless revenue. Similarly, a broadband customer can be converted into a wireless subscriber.
The relevant metric therefore becomes customer lifetime value across multiple services, rather than the acquisition cost of an individual SIM connection.
T-Mobile Shows Why ARPA Matters as Much as Additions
T-Mobile provides another example of why subscriber volume alone can be misleading.
The operator added 277,000 postpaid accounts in Q2 2026, down 13 percent year over year.
However, postpaid ARPA increased 2 percent to $152.91, while postpaid account churn was 0.99 percent.
Postpaid service revenue increased 13 percent to $15.9 billion.
These numbers illustrate a fundamental customer-acquisition principle.
An operator spending more to acquire a customer can still generate superior economics if that customer produces higher recurring revenue and remains on the network longer.
The more useful equation is therefore:
Acquisition cost → ARPU/ARPA → churn → customer lifetime → lifetime value.
The operator with the lowest CAC is not necessarily generating the highest return.
Rogers Shows Why Gross Additions Matter
Rogers Communications provides perhaps the clearest example of why telecom CAC should be calculated using gross additions rather than net additions.
Rogers generated 333,000 postpaid gross additions in Q2 2026, but only 22,000 postpaid net additions.
During H1 2026, postpaid gross additions reached 762,000, compared with just 50,000 net additions.
Its Q2 postpaid churn was 0.94 percent, while mobile phone ARPU reached $54.25.
Prepaid showed an even wider gap: 199,000 gross additions versus 18,000 net additions, with churn of 5.01 percent.
The difference between gross additions and net additions is critical when measuring telecom customer acquisition.
Operators incur acquisition costs when customers join. Net additions are what remain after disconnections and churn.
Dividing marketing expenditure by net additions can therefore produce a highly distorted CAC figure.
TELUS Focuses on Value-Accretive Growth
TELUS is explicitly emphasizing customer quality over subscriber volume.
The Canadian operator reported 17,000 mobile phone net additions in Q2 2026, while mobile network revenue reached $1.7 billion.
Mobile phone ARPU was $56.36, while blended mobile phone churn stood at 1.08 percent.
TELUS described its strategy as focused on value-accretive customer growth.
That approach highlights another weakness of looking at CAC alone.
A low-cost customer who produces low ARPU and leaves after several months may be less profitable than a more expensive customer who purchases premium plans and remains for years.
Deutsche Telekom Shows the Accounting Scale of Acquisition Costs
Deutsche Telekom demonstrates how customer acquisition expenses can also appear differently in operator financial statements.
At June 30, 2026, Deutsche Telekom carried €4.1 billion in capitalized contract costs, up €0.2 billion from the end of 2025.
Its reporting explains that costs of obtaining contracts primarily include sales commissions paid to employees and third-party retailers through direct and indirect sales channels.
Instead of immediately recognizing all these costs as operating expenses, Deutsche Telekom recognizes them over the estimated customer retention period.
The accounting treatment reinforces the relationship between customer acquisition cost and expected customer lifetime.
CAC Payback Is the Metric Operators Need to Watch
The next step in telecom acquisition analysis is measuring how quickly operators recover what they spend acquiring customers.
A simplified approach is:
CAC payback period = customer acquisition cost ÷ monthly customer contribution
The calculation becomes more powerful when churn is included.
A customer producing high ARPU but leaving after six months may generate less value than a lower-ARPU subscriber staying for five years.
Convergence strengthens the economics further because one household can generate revenue from mobile, broadband, entertainment, security and other services.
This is why telecom operators are focusing on ARPU, churn and customer lifetime value rather than subscriber additions alone.
Telecom Acquisition Is Shifting from Lowest CAC to Highest Lifetime Value
The 2026 data shows very different customer-acquisition strategies.
Jio and Airtel demonstrate acquisition efficiency at enormous scale. Vodafone Idea is spending more through dealer channels while simultaneously rebuilding its network. Verizon is reducing handset subsidies. AT&T is using fiber-wireless convergence to increase customer value, while T-Mobile, Rogers and TELUS show why ARPU, gross additions and churn matter alongside subscriber growth.
The central question is therefore changing.
It is no longer simply: How much does an operator spend to acquire one subscriber?
The more important question is: How much lifetime value does that customer generate for every rupee or dollar spent acquiring them?
For telecom operators in 2026, profitable subscriber growth depends on getting that equation right.
FASNA SHABEER
