Over the past three years aggregate ARPU across Asia-Pacific telcos fell 14%. Data from Informa Telecoms & Media shows that between Q2 2010 and Q2 this year blended APRU dropped in 15 out of 25 countries in APAC.
In dollar terms, ARPUs in the region range from almost $43 in Australia to under $2 in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Three years ago the range was $60 to $2.50. Nine countries have an ARPU below $4 (up from seven in 2010).
The biggest fall was in North Korea where ARPU decreased almost 50% to $11.27 over the three-year period. Other markets with significant drops were Bangladesh (32%), Indonesia and Nepal (27%), Cambodia and Laos (26%), Japan (24%) and Pakistan (21%).
ARPU was stable is just three markets China ($9.72), the Philippines ($3.33) and Sri Lanka ($2.41).
On the positive side, ARPU was up by 20% in Hong Kong ($33.75) and New Zealand ($27.76), 17% in Thailand ($7.33), 8% in Singapore ($36), 6.7% in Taiwan ($23) and 3% in South Korea ($34).
It’s interesting to note that most of the rising ARPU markets have strong 4G coverage. Looking at specific operators, Telstra expanded its LTE sub base to 3.2 million in two years, SK Telecom has about 10 million and Japan’s DoCoMo has 15 million. Singapore now has nearly one million LTE subs while Vodafone NZ had 135,000 in July.
Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report expects LTE subs across the region to hit 75 million by the end of the year. APAC now accounts for 42% of global LTE connections.
A closer look at the Informa data in developed markets shows that South Korea’s ARPU now is at its highest since June 2010. Contrast that with Japan, which is down 31% from 2011 when ARPU hit $60, and Australia, where ARPU has fallen 16% since it reached $50.76 in 2011. Hong Kong is down 6% from 2012 when ARPU was nearly $36.
Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand are all near their peak ARPU levels (only down between 1% and 4%).
But of course the narrow focus on revenue per user ignores the bigger picture – how much a telco had to spend to get the revenue (both capex and opex) and the actual value per user. So the rising revenue in LTE markets is likely offset by the corresponding rise in spending on 4G network gear.