Thailand's mobile market overview - ARPU

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is basically the total revenue divided by the number of subscribers. It is the amount of money, on average, that a user is willing to pay to operator each month. From this view, the ARPU is therefore an indicator telling operators the quality of subscribers they have gained. As we have already known from the previous post that the number of connections reported by operators does not necessarily equal to the number of subscribers, using the ARPU calculated from the number of connections might be distorted. However, it can be used perfectly in relative view, i.e. when we compare amongst operators.


Thailand's mobile ARPU is one of the lowest in the world due to the high competition and price war. The declining rate is quite fast. Now the ARPU is in the range of THB 89 (True Move's Perpaid) to THB 1,316 (DTAC's Contract x2). That is USD $2.7 - $40.

Note that around 90% of subscribers are prepaid, that's why the overall ARPU is more influenced by prepaid ARPU. The 3 graphs above demonstrate that DTAC outperform AIS in terms of ARPU in the recent years. But the difference is not large enough to say who would win more quality subscribers in the longer term. The more obvious is True Move's. True Move might have done a good job in acquiring subscribers (connections), but it traded off with the low ARPU. Subscribers that True Move has acquired are those from the low-ARPU segment, and doubtlessly with low loyalty too. This is definitely not healthy in the long term.