ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has anticipated that with launch of next generation wireless networks and services the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) would rise in coming years.
   With economic conditions and tough market competition in cellular industry, ARPU witnessed a slight decline to Rs. 211 per month during year 2012-13 whereas the ARPU for corresponding period of previous year was Rs. 217 per month.
According to regulator’s latest data, ARPU is highly effective and useful tool to gauge financial stability of any sector. Despite being low and having dropped, Pakistan’s ARPU was still almost double the ARPU in India during 2012-13.
Most likely the operators were not able to uphold their per subscriber revenue due to tough competition and further addition of low income users in the mobile subscriber base and aggressive price competition in the market.
Cellular mobile operators can increase ARPU through additional data revenues by offering non-voice services like mobile banking and other associated offers.