Archive for February, 2009

Angelica Mari, Computing , Friday 27 February 2009 at 17:45:00 Payments via the mobile phones will exceed £600bn by 2013, says research Advances in technology will drive a 12-fold increase in mobile transaction values to more than £600bn by 2013, according to research. According to a study by Informa Telecoms & Media, almost 300 billion transactions will have been conducted …

T-Mobile USA reported a boost in net income and revenue despite a significant drop in subscriber additions. The carrier, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, reported net income for the fourth quarter of 2008 of $483 million, up from $383 million in the year-ago quarter and up from $442 million in the third quarter of 2008.

Revenue: The carrier, the nation’s fourth largest, has service revenues of $4.90 billion in the quarter, up from $4.37 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. Total revenues were $5.72 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from $5.51 billion in the third quarter of 2008 and $5.07 billion in the year-ago period. T-Mobile said that higher total revenues were driven in part by a jump in demand for new devices like the T-Mobile G1 as well as higher contract revenues stemming from T-Mobile’s February 2008 acquisition of SunCom Wireless.  

Net adds: T-Mobile reported 621,000 net new subscriber additions in the quarter, down from 670,000 in the third quarter of 2008 and 951,000 in the fourth quarter of 2007. The number was the lowest quarterly net subscriber additions since the second quarter of 2006. T-Mobile ended the year with 32.8 million subscribers. The carrier added 4.07 million net new customers in 2008, compared to 3.64 million added in all of 2007. This past year’s total included 2.94 million organic net new customers and 1.13 million that were acquired as part the SunCom acquisition.

Churn: Contract, or postpaid, churn for the fourth quarter was 2.4 percent, the same as the third quarter of 2008 and up from 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. Blended churn, including both postpaid and prepaid subscribers, was 3.3 percent in the quarter and up from 3 percent in the third quarter of 2008 and 2.8 percent in the year-ago period. The carrier said its contract churn continues to be affected by the end of two-year contracts, which were first introduced in April 2006, and increased competition.

ARPU: Contract ARPU at the carrier was $54 in the quarter, down from $55 in the third quarter of 2008 and $56 in the fourth quarter of 2007. Blended ARPU was $50 in the fourth quarter of 2008, down from $52 in both the the third quarter of 2008 and the year-ago period.

Data revenue: Data services revenue was $905 million in the quarter, representing 18.5 percent of blended ARPU, up from 15.8 percent of blended ARPU in the fourth quarter of 2007. Data services revenue jumped 31 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 as compared to the year-ago quarter.

For more:
-see this release
- click here to see all the carrier metrics

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(The Paypers) The global mobile payments market is set to reach almost 300 billion transactions, worth more than USD 860 billion by 2013, a twelve-fold increase in…

MetroPCS reported a bump in revenue and reported a profit for the fourth quarter and the full year, but saw its ARPU decline. The flat-rate carrier posted total revenue for the quarter of $724 million, up 22 percent from $591 million in the year-ago quarter. The carrier also had net income of $15 million in the quarter, compared to a $47 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Net additions: The carrier had a little under 520,000 net subscriber additions in the quarter, a 74 percent year-over-year increase. For the year, MetroPCS had around 1.4 million consolidated net additions, and ended 2008 with a little under 5.4 million total subscribers.

Churn: Churn in the fourth quarter increased to 5.1 percent, up from 4.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. For the full year, the churn rate was 4.7 percent, constant from 2007.

ARPU: ARPU in the quarter was $40.52, down from $42.83 in the year-ago quarter. ARPU was also down for the full year, down to $41.39 compared to $43.31 for all of 2007.

Network additions: In November, the carrier launched its nationwide calling plan, which it says provides service in 300 cities coast to coast. At the end of September, MetroPCS and its rival Leap Wireless, settled all of their outstanding litigation and inked a roaming deal that covered both networks’ present and future markets. MetroPCS also launched a service to flash compatible CDMA handsets over to its network.   

For more:
- see this article
- see this release

Related Articles:
MetroPCS had 520K net adds in Q4
MetroPCS launches nationwide plan
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Leap, MetroPCS announce roaming deal
MetroPCS will flash existing CDMA handsets

To complement its process improvement work, Virginia Mason Medical Center has selected Versus Technology, Inc.’s hybrid infrared (IR) and RFID real-time locating system (RTLS), Enterprise VISion: Clinic, to optimize patient flow, staff working environment and overall efficiencies at the Virginia Mason Kirkland clinic in Kirkland, Wash. The primary care clinic, set to open this month in a new location, expects between 300 and 400 patient visits each day and will utilize Versus’ real-time patient tracking to manage the patient experience by reducing wait times and increas

NEW DELHI — The Government has accepted the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for introduction of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) Licensees in India. TRAI had made the recommendations on 6th August, 2008.

Opera, which provides a Java based mobile browser has reported that in January 2009, consumer Opera Mini use jumped 12.1% over the previous month to 20 million unique users. Monthly page views increased even more, jumping 18% to 7.6 billion Web pages in the same time period.

Hong Kong cellco SmarTone announced a 68% fall in profit for the second half of 2008 yesterday as it forecast a further decline in business this year.

Shares of the cable and telecommunications company Virgin Media Inc. made gains Wednesday, helped by fourth-quarter results that showed lower customer turnover.

The mobile sector has emerged as the dominant driver of the global telecommunications industry. The US$700 billion mobile industry now serves almost half of the world’s population with 3.6 billion subscriptions at the end of 2008.