ARPU patterns as market penetration rises

Following some of our recent work on real ARPU, we look here at how ARPU changes with market penetration in the more mature markets to explore where the phenomenon of multiple connections per user takes effect. In many markets where pre-paid is significant, it appears that the market enters a phase of fairly stable ARPU when it reaches about 50% penetration, followed by a phase of falling ARPU at higher penetration levels as multiple connections become more of a feature of the market. However, multiple connections is only one factor affecting ARPU - in the last five years many of these markets have also been affected by reductions in termination rates and the arrival of MVNOs.