IDF updated Cellcom on the extension of the contract with the company by 2 more years

The IDF has updated Cellcom on the extension of the contract with the company, as part of which it will continue to provide cellular services to tens of thousands of military personnel and employees of the Ministry of Defense. Cellcom has been providing cellular services to the IDF for nearly a decade. Now, as part of a tender held by the Ministry of Defense's Procurement Administration, an agreement has been signed for another two years.
In the past month, the company has faced one of the biggest crises in its history - calls for a consumer boycott of it during Operation Wall Guard. The boycott was led by MK Bezalel Smutrich of Religious Zionism, after the company published a poster announcing a one-hour protest strike calling for coexistence during the violence in the mixed cities.
According to data from Mobility in May, in less than two weeks, the company lost about 11.5 thousand cellular customers to its competitors - Partner, HOT Mobile, Pelephone and Expon. In the same month, about 38,000 customers left the company, but only about 26,000 new customers joined. For Cellcom, which has 3.2 million mobile customers, this is less than 0.5%, but the company's growth in recruiting new customers in recent months has been interrupted.
For months Cellcom has led by a margin over its competitors in recruiting new customers. For example, in April the company recruited 3,670 net new customers while its competitors, apart from Partner, suffered from a negative growth rate, meaning that the rate of recruitments did not exceed the rate of those leaving. During May, Cellcom continued to lead the recruitment table, but on May 18, the company's employees announced a strike of solidarity with the Arab company, which drew harsh criticism from the right wing of the political map, which called for a boycott.
The boycott calls have affected large organizations that have stated that they intend to mobile hundreds of their people, who were the company’s customers, to competing companies. A campaign was launched on social networks against Cellcom, and in WhatsApp groups of Likud supporters, recommendations were circulated on how to switch companies, along with telephone numbers of cellular agents who could do so for customers who wanted to leave.
According to sources in the cellular market, Cellcom has invested a lot of resources in the fight against customer departure and in order to stop the trend, it has offered special offers and packages at low prices. The damage of the boycott is still unclear, but it seems that the big wave of abandonment that the company has experienced is already behind it. The deal with the IDF helps the company broadcast business as usual, but only at the end of the next quarter will it be possible to understand the rate of damage.