Broadband bundles booming for TPG

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 04 May 2011 15:18

IT Industry - Listed Tech

TPG has revealed a ninefold increase in the number of customers on its broadband/home phone bundles since the end of June 2010.

In a presentation to a Maquarie investment conference the company said the bundled product was "now the key driver of growth" with 82,000 customers that represented 15 percent of it broadband subscriber base.

At he end of April the company had a total of 535,000 broadband customers made up of 338 on-net customers, 82,000 taking bundled services and 115,000 off-net. At the end of FY10 it had 489,000 of which 131,000 were off-net and only 9000 taking bundles.

ARPU has trended downwards slightly from $50 per month in 2HFY09 to $46 per month at 1HFY11. However the company said: "ARPU is now trending higher as the best selling bundled plan ($59.99 including GST) forms a larger proportion of the customer base." ARPU from bundle customers was $51, from on-net broadband only $45 and from off-net $48. It added that the bundle customers also generate about $10 of call revenue per month "at high margin."

In addition to bundle customers TPG also has a decreasing number of former Soul customers taking telephone services off-net. At the end of April there were 18,000 of these, down from 44,000 in January 2009.

Overall the number of TPG's mobile subscribers has been declining over this period. However this decline has been entirely the result of a decrease in customers of the former Soul Mobile service. TPG Mobile subscriber numbers have increased strongly. In January 2009 there was a total of 219,000 made up of 179,000 Soul and 40,000 TPG. At the end of April the total was 197,000: 14,000 Soul and 183,000 TPG, with 11,000 being added in Q3FY11.