But revenue negatively affected: -0.5%
Tefficient’s 28th public analysis on the development and drivers of mobile data ranks 116 operators based on average data usage per SIM, total data traffic and revenue per gigabyte in the first half of 2020.
The data usage per SIM grew for basically every operator. 42% could turn that data usage growth into ARPU growth.
It’s a bit lower than in our previous reports and COVID-19 is to blame; many operators did report negative revenue development in Q2 2020 when travelling stopped and many prepaid subscriptions expired.
Mobile data traffic continued to grow, though: +40%. Although operators in certain markets were giving mobile data away to mitigate the negative consequences of lockdowns, most of the global traffic growth is true, underlying, growth. Data usage actually grew faster in Q2 2020 than in Q1 2020 even though lockdowns mainly affected Q2.
Our industry demonstrated resilience, but now needs to fill the data monetisation toolbox with more or sharper tools.
Download analysis: 40% more gigabytes in spite of the pandemic