China Unicom 3G ARPU (average revenue per month) touched $12.57 (RMB 76.50) during the nine months of 2013.
The second largest telecom operator’s total ARPU for mobile business is $7.98 (RMB 48.6).
This compares with around $2-3 for Indian telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, etc. These telecoms do not share their 3G ARPU. But mobile data revenue from 3G is almost double of mobile ARPU in India, industry experts say.
China Unicom, which competes with China Mobile and China Telecom, on Friday said out of service revenue from the mobile business, service revenue from the 3G business was RMB64.65 billion in the first three quarters of 2013.
As a percentage of service revenue from the mobile business, there was an increase from 45.9 percent in the first three quarters of 2012 to 57.8 percent in the first three quarters of 2013, said China Unicom.
The telecom operator said it added 35.170 million 3G subscribers in the first three quarters of 2013 to reach 3G subscriber base of 111.626 million in September 2013. In the third quarter, it added 12 million 3G users.
Meanwhile, China Unicom revenue rose 19 percent to RMB 75.9 billion in the third quarter.
Net income of China Unicom gained 51 percent to RMB 3.06 billion ($503 million) from RMB 2.02 billion a year earlier.
Unicom had 111.6 million 3G subscribers in the third quarter, compared with 169.5 million for market leader China Mobile. The smaller operator had a mobile customer base of 272.8 million, or 36 percent of China Mobile’s 755.2 million.
China Unicom says its revenue rose 18.9 percent to RMB 220.17 billion in the first three quarters of 2013. Out of the total revenue, service revenue was RMB 177.38 billion, up 13.6 percent. In the first three quarters of 2013, service revenue from the mobile business was RMB 111.94 billion, up 20.2 percent.
Net addition of the mobile subscribers was 33.452 million in the first three quarters of 2013 and the total number of the mobile subscribers reached 272.764 million in September 2013.
