For Idea Cellular, Mobile Data trends are slow and steady - revenue rose 5%, ARPU 1% and 1.7mn 3G adds growth. Data subs increased by 2.7 million to 44mn. More than 50% of data subscribers are on 3G now.
Sequential growth in data revenues slowed to 5% in 4Q versus 7-10% previously. Data ARPU increased by 1% q-q while data usage per
customer was down 5%. Note that Bharti?s ARPU declined 2% with a 2% increase in data usage per customer. During its conference call, Bharti said that it had not been able to increase data penetration for the last 3-4 months.
Additionally, given Idea's two-thirds smart phone-using subscribers are yet to enroll for 3G & 4G subscription, its strategy to raise prices could make subscribers vulnerable to churn toward price-led competitive market. Also, the delay in getting data users impacts monetization of huge data capacity created in the past 12 months.
