[3GScottishUser]

From Mobile Today (08/04/2005):

3 UK’s customer base has grown by around 200% since June last year in a period of meteoric growth – but most were prepay customers, trimming the operator’s monthly ARPU.

In its full-year results until 30 March, Hutchison Whampoa claimed that 3’s UK customer base stood at 3.021 million, with 45% of subscribers on contracts (55% on prepay).

The operator has gained 1.82 million new customers over the nine months since its half-year figures on 30 June last year.

Many seem to be prepay customers, although contract connections have risen at a continuous rate, from 750,000 in August to 1.4 million in March.

The reason for the prepay growth stems from the impact made by the launch of ThreePay in spring last year, coupled with the traditional explosion of prepay connections in the busy Christmas period.

In June last year, a massive 64% of 3’s UK customer base were on contracts, although the figure now stands at 45%. However, the figure still compares favourably to 3’s UK operator rivals, and 3’s blended monthly ARPUs are still far ahead of the other UK networks’ figures.

Despite its strong performance, 3’s monthly ARPU has suffered slightly from the influx of prepay customers, falling from £43.22 in June last year to £40.30 in its full-year results.

In an encouraging piece of news, the percentage of revenues coming from data services rose 6% to 20% of its total, the second highest in the UK behind O2.

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/artman-test/publish/article_276.shtml

[Denis_mynse]

"In an encouraging piece of news, the percentage of revenues coming from data services rose 6% to 20% of its total, the second highest in the UK behind O2."

Take care about ARPU, ARPU definitions are quite differents from one operator to another. I have heard that Three ARPU are gross ARPU i.e before promotion (free SMS or minutes during 3 months for example).

Denis

[3GScottishUser]

Indeed and dealer cashbacks from networks translate to APRU too.

Smoke and mirrors!

[Ben]

It certainly makes it very hard for those of us on the outside to get an idea of what's happening on the inside of these companies.

I like how O2 have a higher percentage of data revenue than Three - given that O2 actually provide data-centric products and services it only seems fair! Three's 'area' is more a of a sweet shop.

[3g-g]

I've never understood what these figures all mean, but my take on it is that the ARPU figures are more or less worthless other than for making shareholders happy or giving the press something to write about. As Denis and 3GSU both mention, there's a lot that can be taken into consideration that isn't mentioned. So they hand out figures saying people on our network are spending this, but we haven't taken into consideration, for arguments sake here, cashback from dealers. Whereas another network says, ah, our customers are spending this a month, but we haven't taken into consideration the the time of year, or that there's a full moon in the sky. Ok, a bit OTT, but you get the picture.

All these things are also based on OIBDA, and the companies assests, the customer numbers... the list goes on!

In fact, here's how Orange calculate ARPU.. and it's different for the UK and France!



ARPU - for Orange: annual average revenue per user is calculated by dividing network revenues for the previous 12 months by the weighted average number of customers during the same period. Network revenues include outgoing traffic, incoming traffic, connection fees, visitor roaming and value added services. The weighted average number of customers during a period is the average of the monthly average customer bases for the period. The monthly average customer base is calculated as the sum of the opening and closing customer bases for the month divided by two. ARPU is quoted on a revenue per customer per year basis. Orange France (mainland) does not currently receive revenues from other French mobile network operators for voice calls from their networks that terminate on Orange France's mainland network as in some other markets, in particular the United Kingdom. As a consequence, French and UK ARPUs are not directly comparable.

AUPU - for Orange: average usage per user, calculated by dividing the total minutes used over the preceding 12 months (outbound calls, inbound calls and roaming) by the average subscriber base of Orange for the same period. AUPU is quoted on a monthly basis per customer.