Average Revenue Per User, or ARPU, is a measure often used when discussing financial results of mobile network operators. But in this day and age, ARPU has become pretty much irrelevant as discussed here. Still it is used a lot. Finally, I've recently seen a refreshingly different approach being used by the London Times. Instead of reporting ARPU, network operator performance was assessed in market share and revenue terms. That makes a lot of sense to me!
All network operators need to build a nationwide network to compete. So comparing the market share between operators makes sense to me because each network operator has a similar network to build and support. How thoroughly and thin-meshed that network is built is another matter. That distorts the market share picture a bit. So maybe one should add the number of base stations into the equation?
As always, comments are welcome!
Is the measure not simply APPU (average profit per user)? This takes into consideration the impact of subsidies (and other acquisition costs) as well as all other costs associated with managing the user within a network (support, network mantainence etc). It also reflects market share as carriers achieve greater economies of scale.