2 cr new cell phone subscribers in Q3

The average revenue per user of mobile telecom subscribers continues to fall even as the subscriber base goes on increasing.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) of mobile telecom subscribers continues to fall even as the subscriber base goes on increasing. The ARPU for GSM services declined by 6.2 per cent from Rs 337 in the quarter ending September 2006 to Rs 316 in the quarter ending December 2006.

For CDMA services, the ARPU declined to Rs 196 for the quarter ending December 2006 from Rs 215 for the quarter ending September 2006, marking a negative growth of 8.83 per cent. The industry, however, added 2.008 crore new subscribers during this period, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)’s quarterly performance indicator.

The combined subscriber base of mobile and fixed line services was 189.92 million at the end of 2006. This was an increase of 11.7 per cent from a subscriber base of 170.02 million at the end of September 2006, showing an increase of 11.70 per cent, said the Trai report. The overall growth for the year (December 2005 to December 2006) was 52.2 per cent. Tele-density in the October-December 2006 quarter reached 17.16 compared with 15.41 in the the previous quarter.

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The subscriber base for wireless services increased from 129.54 million to 149.62 million while that of fixed line services decreased from 40.5 million to 40.3 million, the report said.

The Internet subscribers base reached 85.47 lakh in the quarter, registering a growth of 5.9 per cent and the broadband subscriber base reached 20.19 lakh, registering a growth of 11.12 per cent. The number of broadband subscribers (with a download speed of 256 Kbps or more) was 20.54 lakh as on December 31, 2006, a growth of 13.04 per cent over the previous quarter’s figure. The ARPU for dial-up Internet subscribers was Rs 205 for the quarter ending December 06, while the minutes of usage for dial-up access per subscriber/ month was 190 minutes.