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Wireless Federation » archive for 'pre-paid'

Cincinnati Bell posts a rise of 4% in net income (USA)

  • November 1st, 2008
  • 6:20 am

Cincinnati Bell has announced its third quarter results. Bell posted a rise of 4% year on year with net income of USD27 million. The revenue climbed 1% to USD346.5 million, driven by growth of USD21 million in service revenue from wireless, wireline data, long distance, VoIP, and data centre and managed services. Revenue in the wirless division shows an increase of 8% to USD80.8 million from USD75.1 million twelve months previously. Overall, EBITDA for this quarter comes to USD120 million.

According to Jack Cassidy, Cincinnati Bell President and Chief Executive Officer, ‘Cincinnati Bell’s third-quarter results demonstrate solid performance in the face of challenging times in the US economy.’ The operator had total of 567,000 wireless customers. Cellco’s pre-paid subscribers plunged 8% year-on-year, while its post-paid mobile subscriber base increased to 6%. Pre-paid Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) was USD26.33 and Post paid ARPU was USD48.82.

TEM Peru totals its susbcriber base to 12.2Mn in Q3′08 (Peru)

  • October 30th, 2008
  • 9:00 am

TEM Peru operating under Telefonica’s Movistar brand, posts a net profit of PEN155 million (USD49.5 million) in Q3′08, up by 184% since last year. Q3 revenues totalled PEN882 million, a 33.2% increase in comparison to PEN663 million in the same period last year. Movistar Peru has a total subscriber base of 12.2 million, a rise of 47.4% compared to 3Q07, of which 92% of were prepaid.

   

Verizon revenue grows to 12.5% in 3Q’08 (USA)

  • October 30th, 2008
  • 7:27 am

Verizon reported 12.5% increase in revenue over what it had in during Q3 of the prior year. Part of this was driven by a 28.3% growth in data revenue ARPU versus the prior year, and a total data revenue growth of 42.5% when compared with the prior year.

Taking into account the subscriber base, Verizon Wireless reaches the mark of 70.8 million customers by adding a total of 2.1 million new customers for the quarter. The operator can also swank the lowest contract subscriber churn rate in the country, at 1.03%. Even including pre-paid customers, the company’s blended churn rate remains a very low 1.33%.

Verizon has completed the acquisition of Rural Cellular during the quarter, which accounted for 630,000 of its new subscribers, 120,000 of which it anticipates to lose in an exchange agreement it has worked out with a competing carrier.

DTAC adds 780,425 subscribers in 3Q’08 (Thailand)

  • October 30th, 2008
  • 7:19 am

DTAC, Thailand’s second largest telco in terms of subscribers has announced its third quarter results. Its net profit grows to 4.7% year-on-year to THB1.836 billion (USD53 million), up from THB1.362 billion a year earlier as costs were reduced, but fall 53.0% from THB3.904 billion in the previous quarter, mainly due to a one-time gain in 2Q from a settlement from minor operator DPC.

DTAC subscriber base reaches to the mark of 18.213 million by adding 780,425 subscribers in 3Q08.  Its strong pre-paid take up in provincial areas and strong post-paid net additions, with the cellco’s contract base growing by 7.5% q-o-q to 2.351 million has boosted the customer growth.

Cricket launches daily prepaid plan, Cricket PayGo (USA)

  • October 3rd, 2008
  • 10:20 am

USA’s mobile operator Cricket introduces a daily pre-paid plan named Cricket PayGo. For this new plan the subscribers have to pay USD 1, 2 or 3 per day. The subscribers with USD 1, 2 and 3 will enjoy unlimited local calls, voicemail, caller ID and three-way calling, while the USD 2 and 3 plans add unlimited text and picture messaing and the USD 3 plan has unlimited US long distance, international texts to over 100 countires and mobile internet access. The subscribers also get the oppurtunity to add on US long-distance for USD 0.10 per minute, mobile web use at USD 1 per day, nationwide roaming at USD 0.39 per minute and international texts at USD 0.10 to Mexico and USD 0.15 to most other countries. Subscribers are only billed for days they use the phone, and can change plan by week or month. Along with this service cricket also launches three phones for the service, the Cricket EZ, UTStarcom CDM7126 and Samsung MyShot. Depending on the response the mobile operator will increase the span of availability of the service.

   

Asia’s promising economies will reach $61.35 billion by 2013

  • September 18th, 2008
  • 7:52 am

According to a report, market size for Asia’s emerging economies will reach $61.35 billion by end-2013, at an annual growth rate of 10.7%. The market is growing at a rate of 15.1% from 2007 to 2013. It is expected that mobile subscriber base will reach the mark of 1.13 billion by end-2013 to account for 46% of Asia-Pacific’s total subscribers. The mobile services sector in emerging Asia-Pacific countries (excluding China) earned revenues of $33.27 billion in 2007, report said. Analyst said most mature markets in Europe, the Americas and even Asia are fast reaching saturation, adding fewer connections and offering fewer growth opportunities and over half of the world’s mobile networks are believed to exist in emerging markets. Particularly in the rural sector, Asia’s emerging nations offer the most palpable growth prospects. The subscribers generally are from lower-income hence low ARPU segments, with blended ARPU as low as $3.90 per month in some countries, and subscribers are largely inclined towards prepaid services. Mobile operators and foreign investors have to introduce new business models and flat-rate pricing plans to appeal to these price-sensitive consumers.

Unicel instigates commercial operations in Sao paulo (Brazil)

  • September 9th, 2008
  • 12:10 pm

Under the brand name aeiou, Brazilian mobile start-up Unicel do Brasil Telecomunicacoes (Unicel) instigated commercial operations in Sao Paulo. A local media reports that Unicel expects to sell its entire initial stock of SIM cards in its first year of operation. At the time of launch, the newcomer’s network has capacity for one million users in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area. A pre-paid SIM card with a minimum of BRL20 (USD11.73) is offered by Unicel and the credit will be loaded either online or at its retail store in Vila Madalena. Unicel paid BRL15 million for two 2.5MHz blocks of spectrum authorising it to provide services in 63 municipalities of Sao Paolo.

Groupe Sude Presse - Base to instigate mobile service in 2009 (Belgium)

  • September 8th, 2008
  • 9:54 am

Belgian newspaper publisher Groupe Sud Presse and mobile operator Base are in a partnership to instigate their own mobile brand as of 2009. This new service will help the publisher to further its strategy of making available local and regional information to the public at large across different media platforms at any time of the day, said Didier Hamann, Sud Presse Group’s Director General. Its mobile offering will be available both in the form of prepaid cards and regular subscriptions. This will also include the full range of services on offer from BASE.

Nawras subscribers enjoys lowest prepaid local calls & SMS (Oman)

  • September 8th, 2008
  • 9:41 am

Nawras, the first operator in Oman to introduce SMS and Voice Bundles, offers the lowest prices in the market to the subscribers of  Nawras Mousbak (prepaid) customers. This service is available at just RO 3 for 30 days, benefitting from the same low calling rate which is already enjoyed by Nawras Ajel (postpaid) customers. At 19 baisas per minute calls can be made and to other or fixed line numbers in Oman, the rate will be just 39 baisas per minute. By susbcribing to this offer for 750 baisas, customers can save substantial amounts on text messaging by sending up to 100 SMS for only 7.5 baisa per message. The bundle is valid for 30 days and SMS can be sent to any mobile number in the Sultanate. Unused messages automatically expire at the end of the bundle and any additional SMS sent, over and above the bundle volume, will be charged at the regular rate of 10 baisas.

According to Nawras Consumer Proposition Manager, Aziz al Harrasi, said, “Nawras is thrilled to be the first operator in Oman to introduce SMS and Voice Bundles. We are anticipating that these new services will generate an extremely positive reaction from our prepaid customers. Not only do these bundles give great value as customers know to expect from  Nawras but they also show our continued quest to provide innovative and creative services which really anticipate the evolving needs of our ever-expanding customer base.”

Globalive Communications to go mobile by H2′09 (Canada)

  • September 5th, 2008
  • 11:22 am

Globalive Communications, Canada, is planning to launch it’s commercial mobile service ver the newly built network by Q2′09. The company won the 30 wireless spectrum licences worth CAD442 million (USD416 million) in a national auction in July.
According to a Canadian newspaper, Weather, is also committed to invest USD700 million over four years in the Canadian start-up, which plans to roll out commercial wireless services in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver in its first rollout phase in 2H09, following a trial scheduled for the Q2′09.

Globalive will have it’s focus on pre-paid voice services, rather than data services such as streaming video and TV, in contrast to the plans of it’s national competitors Rogers, Bell and Telus. It also hopes to differentiate itself from the established network operators by providing better customer service, simpler pricing plans without hidden charges, and less expensive phones. Globalive is currently tendering for network infrastructure vendors and is reportedly down to a shortlist of two.