Average revenue per user

Revenue divided by the number of subscribers, usually quoted monthly. The core measure for telecom, media and any subscription business sold to consumers.

An operator with ₹50,400 crore of annual revenue and 28 crore subscribers has a monthly average revenue per user of ₹150.

The measure moves for three separate reasons: price changes, mix changes between prepaid and postpaid or between plan tiers, and changes in usage. Only the first is pricing power.

In Indian telecom, average revenue per user is the single number the whole sector is judged on, because subscriber growth stopped being the constraint years ago.

Watch it beside subscriber count. Rising revenue per user on a shrinking base is not growth.

Decompose any move before reading it as pricing. The figure rises when tariffs go up, when the mix shifts from prepaid toward postpaid, when subscribers move to higher-value plans, and when low-value subscribers churn out. Only the first is pricing power, and the last one raises the average while shrinking the business.