Telecom services earn $11.8 billion in 2Q last year

TELECOM revenues hit $11.8 billion in the 2009 June quarter, up four per cent over the similar 2008 quarter with most revenue streams increasing, according to a just-released Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) report.

Mobile revenues increased 1.5 per cent to $9.3 billion, while Internet revenues jumped "1,926 per cent" to $602 million from $29.7 million in the second quarter of 2009 over the same 2008 quarter. The jump was not explained, but the OUR did express difficulty in monitoring Internet statistics.

Meanwhile, fixed line revenues declined 13 per cent to $1.9 billion over the same period.

The OUR Telecommunications Market Information Quarterly Report posted this month stated that on-net mobile calls continued to generate the majority of service revenues. The mobile operators also benefited from increased text message (SMS) usage, which jumped 22.8 per cent over the review period compared to the same quarter in 2008.

"Although SMS traffic dominated usage, it is on-net calls that continued to generate majority mobile service revenue. By the second quarter of 2009, total revenue totalled $9.29 billion, an increase of 1.5 per cent over the similar period of 2008 and 3.96 per cent since the start of 2009," stated the OUR, the state agency responsible for regulating utilities. "The growth in revenue to date was bolstered mainly by revenue emanating from on-net calls, which contributed to an improvement over the fall-off realised between quarter 4 - 2008 and quarter 1 -2009."

Mobile services are provided by LIME, Digicel and Claro and total mobile subscribers grew 3.78 per cent to 2.8 million at the June quarter 2009 over the previous year's quarter. The report did not desegregate subscriber growth. However, Claro, the newest player, has been aggressively marketing its services to increase its market share, while largest mobile provider Digicel offered a number of promotions to hike on-minute revenues.

"During 2009, Digicel continued to drive value into the market through innovative offers and promotions. This strategy resulted in increased customers and increased minutes of use, which ultimately led to increased revenues during Q2 2009 over Q2 2008," stated Antonia Graham, Digicel group head of public relations in a written response to Business Observer queries. "...This has led to an increase in minutes of use on our network. Our two million customers are now getting more for less."

Fixed-call service subscriptions declined to 310,645 customers by the June 2009 quarter, representing a decline of 11 per cent relative to the similar period during the previous year. Fixed-line service customers spent the majority of time on fixed-to-fixed calls, which accounted for 315.07 million and 313.96 million minutes during quarters 1 and 2 of 2009.

This compared to 378 million and 371.87 million (declines of 16.65 per cent and 15.57 per cent respectively) during the analogous periods of 2008, noted the OUR. Fixed-line services are provided by two service providers -- LIME and Flow -- offering services to both residential and business customers with access to fixed-to-fixed, fixed-to-mobile and international calls.

Internet subscriptions stood at 107,100 at the second quarter of 2009, up 4.5 per cent for the June quarter 2009 -- year over year. Internet services are provided predominantly by Digicel, Flow, LIME and Infochan, giving customers broadband, dial-up, pay-as-you-go, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and mobile Internet services.

The OUR stated that Internet still represents the least amongst the three major income streams of telecoms -- Internet, mobile and fixed-lines services.

"Though a growing service area, the submission of Internet-related data lags behind that of mobile and fixed-line services with the consequence being that much of the information necessary to do a proper analysis for this section is lacking," said the OUR. "Therefore, proceeding with the available data allows for reference chiefly to subscriptions."

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