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VHA close to being Australia's number two mobile operator |
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Monday, 14 September 2009 |
VHA, the mobile operator formed from the merger of Vodafone Australia and Hutchison Australia, has overtaken Optus in 3G customer numbers, has the highest monthly per customer revenue of any of the three operators and is neck-and-neck with Optus on overall revenues, according to market researcher, Telsyte.
Telsyte put VHA ARPU for the six months to June 2009 at $47.50, ahead of Telstra at $45.60. Telsyte analyst Gary Tsang told iTWire that VHA's market leading ARPU was largely the result of a focus on postpaid subscribers, in contrast to Telstra, which has grown its prepaid subscriber base significantly in recent months.
However, Telsyte said that all players, including MVNOs as a group, experienced a year-on-year ARPU rise, thanks to Australians' growing love affair with non-voice services, which now make up well over one-third of their mobile bills.
"Telstra's prepaid subscriber base was up 8.9 percent in the six months to June and now accounts for 35 percent of total," Tsang said. Also contributing to VHA's ARPU lead was the relative low percentage of 2G customers (Hutchison brought only 3G to the joint venture) that generally have lower ARPU than 3G. "Also, Hutchison never had a strong focus on prepaid," Tsang said, adding: "VHA has actually lost numbers in the past six months. They changed reporting after the merger and took out a lot of inactive users that Vodafone used to report. "
Via ITWire
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