Wednesday, March 19, 2008

ARPU

To the list of jargons used in the telecom field this is one of the few. This acronym stands for "Average Revenue Per User" or "Average Revenue Per Unit".

Now the mobile is in the hands of 50% people and we are entering the third quartile. Most of the people who are going to be added are expected to be from low income group. The countries which are going to contribute to this bulk is China, India , Pakistan and Bangladesh. With the declining ARPU, mobile services can be profitable only if there is a continous high growth at the same time the processes are corrected to make it more efficient and cost effective. recently I read that Aircel has announced plan to provide life time services for new subscribers @ Rs .49 ~= $ 1.2 for existing subscriber @ 249 ~= $6.2. And with the voice call rates declining day by day from where are the operators expecting to earn much of the revenue? How they are planning to be profitable?

The crux of the story is the shift in the contribution to the revenue by the data services.
The revenue percentage for the services provided by the mobile operator are continously shifting from Voice services to the Data services like SMS etc. Data services are more frequently used in the urban areas which is resisting the decline of overall ARPU. In India, Popular serials ,like Indian Idol or Bid2Win, are one of the factors in the rise of revenues from data services, as more and more people are voting/bidding using sms. And these operators are expecting mobile banking to start contributing.

But still it needs to be seen if the data services can offset the decline of ARPU to an inclination.

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