Telstra mobile revenue now exceeds PSTN

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 13 August 2009 08:04

IT Industry - Strategy

Telstra has reported spectacular growth in wireless broadband revenues, which has helped mobile revenues for the first time exceed full year PSTN revenues.

The change is one of a number of significant evolutionary milestones in Telstra's transition from an old world telco. As iTWire reported earlier today, IP data revenues exceeded legacy revenues for the first time in the 08-09 year.

Telstra said: "Mobile services revenue (including wireless broadband) increased largely due to the continued growth in the number of customers, increased demand for Next G services and wireless data services and increased usage across a range of voice and data services. A significant contributor has been wireless broadband that is continuing its rapid growth. Mobiles revenue for the year of $6,878 million exceeded PSTN revenue of $6,337 million for the first time in a fiscal year."

The number of wireless broadband services almost doubled during the year, creating another milestone: services in operation passed the one million mark, up from 526k in June 2008. Wireless broadband revenue grew by 69.2 percent to $587 million. These numbers, include mobile data cards, USB dongles and laptops with embedded modems, but not 3G phones. Telstra said the revenue growth reflected its "strategy of focussing on high-end customers."

Wireless broadband revenue is now close a third of fixed line retail broadband revenue that totalled $1.533b for the year, a 15.9 percent increase. Telstra said that mobile traffic (voice and data combined) was doubling every 18 months.

Mobile broadband services in operation grew by 9.2 percent, 856k to nearly 10.2 million. Just over half, 482k were postpaid additions. Blended ARPU increased 4.8 percent to $51.84 per month.

Telstra said: "The rate of ARPU growth has slowed in the second half compared to the first half. We believe that the impact of the economy continues to be felt in the mobiles business, with average minutes of use falling from 98 minutes in the first half of fiscal 2009 to 91 minutes in the second half. The blended ARPU is also impacted by the growth in prepaid which has been buoyed by the introduction of prepaid wireless broadband."