Data from Wireless World Forum?s ?German Mobile Market 2006? statistical handbook reveals that ARPU is in decline across the German operators and average ARPU will fall from $28.0 pcm in 2005 to $26.5 pcm, a year on year fall of 2.7%.

As penetration nears 100% in the key German demographic, growth will occur via subscribing the old and young, improving the prepay/postpay ratio and optimising ARPU through data services.

In accordance with international trends, Germany is seeing growth in data revenues.

Falling voice revenues and rising data revenues will cause the percentage of ARPU spent on data services to rise from 18% in 2005 to 21% in 2007.

Prepaid subscription numbers are only slightly greater than postpaid subscription numbers, giving Germany one of the lowest prepay/postpay ratios in Europe. Growth in 2005 was strongest in the prepaid market with T-mobile, Vodafone and O2 all seeing larger subscriber growth in the prepay sector. In contrast, 88% of E-plus?s new subscriptions were in the postpay sector.

Vodafone and T-mobile hold just under 75% of the market in terms of subscription numbers. O2 customers generated the highest ARPU in 2005 at $32.2 pcm and spent the highest proportion of ARPU on data services at 22.8%.

Data Contained in the Report on:

• T-Mobile
• Vodafone
• E-Plus
• O2