I have to take issue with that. DoCoMo's voice tariffs remain much higher
than those in the rest of the world, as do their voice ARPUs (sorry, average
revenue per user), and are falling much faser In fact, the leading mobile
operators in Europe in each country (i.e. those which the best customers)
are seeing flattening out in the ARPU decline of the past few years.
This is partly a feature of the maturing in the market, and the much higher
penetration than in Japan. That is, usage goes up the longer you've had a
phone, but the rapid growth in the last 2 years (90m net new customers in W
Europe in 2000) means that most people haven't had a phone very long (= few
calls/user = low ARPU). As growth is now much slower, that 'bulge' will work
it's way through the system and drive average voice usage way up, which
*should* more than compensate for falling tariffs. Looking into the past to
see the future, Sonera's ARPUs have risen every year since 1996, despite
very rapid growth.
So, it's as much a case of 'DoCoMo hasn't got to where other operators are'
as the other way around ;)
)if you look at DoCoMo's figures you'll see that DoCoMo's voice
)income goes down and the data income goes up. Most other mobile
)carriers in the western world have not reached that position yet,
)because they have not found a viable business model for mobile
)data service yet. That's one of the reasons the valuation of
)DoCoMo is so high.
)
)Gerhard Fasol
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Received on Wed Aug 8 09:14:48 2001