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Viva banks on data to bolster its revenues [TradeArabia](TradeArabia Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Viva Bahrain, a leading telecom operator, expects data to account for at least half of revenue within two years - from a quarter now - as it seeks to counter a decline in conventional calls and texts, its chief executive said. Viva - owned by Saudi Telecom Company (STC), the Gulf's biggest telecoms company by market value - launched in Bahrain in 2010, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication. It became a third player in the kingdom's already saturated market, but managed to win customers by undercutting rivals, analysts said. Operators' average revenue per user (ARPU) is falling in Bahrain, in line with global trends as customers make fewer conventional calls and texts in favour of instant messaging and Internet phone calls, which carry lower margins. However, Viva said the launch of its next-generation mobile network - which allows web download speeds several times faster than its predecessor 3G - was helping it counter the decline in ARPU by attracting more customers with high data usage. Viva chief executive Ulaiyan Al Wetaid said data would provide 50 per cent of its revenue within two years, from 25 per cent now. "Bahrain has a lot of demand for data, we're moving fast towards that point,"?? he said on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai yesterday (September 29). "Revenues from data have grown significantly,'?? he said. Mobile broadband penetration in Bahrain was 128 per cent of the population at the end of 2013 - equating to 1.28 subscriptions per person - according to the industry regulator. That compared with about 27 per cent globally and 75 per cent in the developed world, according to the International Telecommunication Union. This shows some users in Bahrain have multiple phones and switch provider depending on which has the best terms for the service they want to use, fuelling price competition. Mobile broadband accounts for 90 per cent of all broadband use there. - TradeArabia News Service ? (c) 2014 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |