ARPU declines to Rs 374

Posted on | February 1, 2006 |

Average monthly revenue per subscriber has declined to Rs 374 for the quarter ended Septemebr 2005 for GSM mobile operators while for the CDMA operators the figure is even lower at Rs 244.

ARPU for post-paid subscribers was much higher compared to pre-paid customers. All India postpaid ARPU stood at Rs 646 per month which is about 2.3 times than that of all India prepaid ARPU of Rs 284. For CDMA operators too, postpaid ARPU is much higher compared to prepaid.

Lets wait for a few months more to find out the effect lifetime plans have on ARPU. Its ironical that CDMA operators, who are best placed to offer data services having the potential to increase ARPU, have users with low ARPU while GSM operators who have more top-end users are not ready with services for them.

Also, TRAI has concluded that if first 11 years of performance is considered, the performance of Indian mobile sector appeared to be better than China. China launched its mobile services in 1988 and India in 1995.

China has been adding about 4 to 5 million mobile subscribers every month in last five years. India has also achieved this landmark in December 2005 when the mobile subscriber addition reached around 4.5 million in a single month for the first time since the launch of mobile services in the year 1995.

“Thus India seems to have really caught up with China in mobile growth,” TRAI said in a statement.

The question is why are we five years late and also it remains to be seen if we can sustain new additions at that rate.

Source: Zee News

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