ARPU is turning out to be a real bottleneck for Indian mobile service providers. Trai’s latest report highlighting the performance indicators of operators for quarter ended September 2008 shows that ARPU for GSM operators in September reached Rs 221 as compared to Rs 239 in June, a decline of 7.53 percent.

ARPU for postpaid service declined by 2.8 percent to Rs 584 as compared to Rs.600 in the preceding quarter while for prepaid service the ARPU declined by 7.5 percent to Rs 189 as compared to Rs.204 in June. For CDMA segment, all India blended ARPU (per month) for the second quarter stood at Rs.122 as compared to Rs.139 for the previous quarter.

Overall the subscriber base for telecom services increased 8.55 percent in the quarter to 353.66 million as compared to 325.79 million. Tele-density after Q2 stands at 30.64 as compared to 28.33 in June. Wireless subscribers increased from 286.87 million to 315.31 million but wireline subscriber base decreased for the quarter to 38.35 million from 38.92 million in quarter ending June.

Revenue-wise, the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) for the quarter is placed at Rs.273 billion (Rs.27,357 crore) as against Rs.26,990 crore (Rs.269 billion) for the previous quarter, at an increase of 1.36 percent.

For internet services, the subscriber base after Q2 reached 12.24 million against 11.66 million in June at a growth of 4.97 percent. BSNL increased its subscriber base to reach 6.38 million in September from 5.94 million from June.