Telecom Argentina's mobile unit Personal added more than half a million customers in its home market in Q4 2007 to end the year with a total of 10.67m - 27% up year on year. Adding in the 1.63m the company has in neighbouring Paraguay through its Nucleo subsidiary, the Telecom Argentina Group customer base stood at 12.29m.

Total group net additions in mobile were just over 2.7m in the 12 months to 31st December 2007, which is equivalent to proportionate growth of 28%. The increase in cellular revenues (+34%) outperformed the increase in the average number of customers (+31%) between 2006 and 2007 to reach P$5.77bn.

Revenue growth was just 8% in the rest of the business, which meant that the contribution of Telecom Argentina's mobile units to the top line increased from 59% in 2006 to 64% in 2007.

In Argentina, mobile revenues were up by 35% to P$5.34bn after a 39% increase in service revenues (+P$1.33bn) and a 9% increase in turnover from handset sales. However, domestic ARPU remained constant at P$39 in 2007, which implies that the boost to service revenues came both as a result of the increase in the customer base and of an increase in service revenues unrelated to the customer base, that is, roaming revenues. Meanwhile, total voice traffic volumes were up by 31%, implying unchanged per-customer usage and pricing on an annual average basis. Nevertheless, as the chart below shows, the effective average revenue per minute has been heading upwards for the last five years - mainly as a result of increasing SMS and data volumes and the ever increasing importance of data revenues.

In Paraguay, total revenues were 22% higher compared to 2006 at P$433m, although how this relates to customer spending is unclear since Telecom Argentina has made the retrogressive step of choosing to cease disclosure of ARPU for Nucleo.

Posted to the site on 18th March 2008

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