Cingular was first amongst its peers to report the Q2 numbers. ARPU is following the trendline. Voice ARPU 59c while Data ARPU increased by 55c (12% of overall ARPU) with a overall decline of 4c. Carriers should be going after the data market like their life depended on it. Though things have improved over the last 18 months (Data ARPU approx doubled), more can and should be done to educate the end-user and make the user-experience on the device much better. UMTS/HSDPA will be key to that strategy but Cingular needs to get its act together and start deploying handsets into the market. They are already behind their competitors and behind in their plans. UMTS is now in 27 key markets but number of devices in the market are woefully short of what they need to be.

Verizon and Sprint are next.

We will be doing a detailed paper on worldwide ARPU trends. Stay tuned.