The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Strong mobile revenue growth and a large increase in new mobile and broadband customers has helped number two telco Optus produce a healthy 13 per cent growth in first quarter net profit to $139 million.
Optus, the wholly-owned Australian arm of Sinapore incumbent telco SingTel, reported a 12 per
cent increase in operating revenue for the quarter to the end of June
to $2.2 billion, and says its mobile customer base now exceeded 8
million for the first time.
SingTel, meanwhile, blamed the struggling Aussie dollar for its damp
first quarter revenue growth of just 2 per cent to S$3.85 billion
(A$3.2 billion), but reported a 10 per cent increase in underlying
profit to S$945 million.
“The Group performed well and achieved earnings growth despite the
uncertain economic environment and negative impact of the Australian
dollar and regional currencies,” SingTel group chief executive Chua
Sock Koong said.
“This reflects the strength of our businesses and also recovery in the
regional mobile associates’ earnings. I am pleased to affirm our
guidance that was given in May.”
Optus chief executive Paul O’Sullivan said the Australian unit’s
revenue growth was “impressive” across its networks against the
backdrop of the slowdown across the Australian economy.
O’Sullivan said Mobile revenue increased 21 per cent to A$1.34 billion,
with customer growth delivering a second consecutive quarter of strong
outgoing service revenue. The company added 213,000 new mobile and
wireless broadband customers in the quarter, of which 139,000 were in
postpaid.
Optus said new customer growth had been under-pinned by demand for the
Apple iPhone 3G and other smartphones, as well as its ‘monster caps’
and ‘Timeless’ plans. While margins on iPhone 3g customer acquisition
and recontracts were more costly, they delivered an accelerated growth
in post-paid customers.
“Optus has had a strong start to the financial year, accelerating our
momentum with significant customer acquisitions across the mobile,
consumer and business divisions,” O’Sullivan said.
The company said revenue from business and wholesale fixed line
services grew 6.4 per cent, with a number of large new contracts –
including the ANZ bank – driving growth in the Optus ICT and managed
services business.
Wholesale revenue growth from domestic voice traffic and stronger
demand for internet bandwidth and access offset a decline in corporate
voice and data usage, Optus said.
Consumer fixed line services revenue grew 6.7 per cent, due to growing
customer numbers and ongoing demand for broadband and fixed telephony
bundles. Optus had 979,000 fixed-line telephony customers, and 880,000
fixed broadband customers at the end of June, up 17 per cent in the
broadband base from a year ago.
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