Wireless Federation

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel) said Tuesday its Asia Pacific mobile phone subscriber base rose almost 50 percent to 185.34 million at the end of the March quarter from a year earlier.

Southeast Asia’s biggest telecom firm said the increase was driven by strong growth in all eight of its markets: Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand as well as the home market in Singapore.

Compared with the previous quarter, growth came in 8.0 percent higher, or a record 13.80 million new customers, SingTel said ahead of its full-year earnings report on Wednesday.

India’s Bharti, where SingTel holds a 30.44 percent stake, drew a record 6.82 million new clients for the quarter ended March 31, it said. Bharti’s total mobile subscriber base stood at 61.99 million, up 67 percent from the year before, SingTel said.

Indonesia’s Telkomsel added 3.45 million new mobile clients during the quarter, bringing its total subscribers to 51.34 million, up 32 percent from the same quarter last year, SingTel said. It owns 35 percent of Telkomsel, Indonesia’s biggest mobile phone operator.

Thailand’s AIS, where SingTel has 21.36 percent equity, expanded its customer base by 3.6 percent in the quarter or 19 percent year-on-year, while the Philippine associate Globe Telecom added 26 percent more subscribers compared with the same quarter last year, SingTel said.

Warid Telekom of Pakistan reported 14.40 million mobile clients at the end of March, up 9.0 percent from the previous quarter. Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd (PBTL) grew its customer base by 11 percent from the December quarter, SingTel said.

SingTel owns 30 percent of Warid Telecom and 45 percent of PBTL.

SingTel’s wholly-owned Australian subsidiary Optus reported a total mobile customer base of 7.14 million for the March quarter, up 5.9 percent from the previous year and 2.0 percent from the December quarter.

For the Singapore home market, SingTel added a record 244,000 mobile customers, raising its customer base to 2.57 million, up an annual 41 percent, it said.

SingTel, the biggest company on the Singapore stock exchange in terms of market capitalization, is 56 percent owned by state-linked investment firm Temasek Holdings, according to the Temasek website.

SingTel shares were trading at 3.76 Singapore dollars a share Tuesday afternoon, up five cents from the previous day.

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