Optus mobile growth stalls

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 07 November 2006 14:44

IT Industry - Deals

Optus' mobile customers rose just 0.6 percent in the three months to 30 September, after growing by 7.7 percent in the preceding nine months. Parent, SingTel however reported 36 percent growth  in group mobile numbers taking its customer base past the 100 million mark.

SingTel claims this to be the largest mobile customer base of any operator in Asia, outside of China. SingTel added 8.4 million customers in the latest quarter. The figures were released a day ahead  of SingTel's first quarter results, due on 8 November.

The strongest growth came from Indian operator Bharti and from Telkomsel in Indonesia. Bharti grew its customer base 92 percent to 27.1 million in the year to 30 September. Telkomsel reached 32.5 million customers, a 38 percent increase from a year ago.

In Australia, Optus added 46,000 customers for the quarter, increasing its mobile customer base to 6.60 million. Of these 184,000 were on its 3G network.