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.