Overall SoftBank revenue expands 7.9% year-over-year
Japanese mobile operator SoftBank ended the third quarter of fiscal year 2015 with 31.68 million mobile subscribers in the country, up from 31.17 million in the same period last year. Net additions during the quarter totaled 74,000.
SoftBank offers TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE services across Japan, launching the networks in 2012.
The number of units sold for main subscribers of mobile communications services for Q3 decreased to 3 million from to 3.5 million in the same quarter the previous fiscal year.
The company’s overall revenue for the nine months ended December 31 reached 6.81 trillion yen ($59.37 billion), up 7.9% year-on-year. Net profits for the period reached 428.9 billion yen, down 26% vs. the same period in fiscal 2014. Revenue from domestic operations totaled 231 trillion yen in the period, up 2.8% year-on-year.
In the U.S., where the Japanese telco owns mobile operator Sprint, revenue reached 2.78 trillion yen in the first three quarters of fiscal 2015, climbing 3.7% year-on-year. The Sprint platform had 1.05 million net subscriber additions for the third quarter, ending December with a total of 57.86 million.
SoftBank’s overall capex for fiscal Q3 totaled 304 billion yen, down from 376 billion yen in the same quarter the previous fiscal year.
“Sprint is showing definitive signs of a turnaround,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son reportedly told members of the media this week in Tokyo.
The Japanese telco is collaborating with Huawei in the development of what it’s calling TDD+ technology and also has recently signed a deal with ZTE for the deployment of 4.5G technology.
Thai telco Dtac to invest $ 2 billion in 2016-2018 period
In other APAC news, Thai mobile operator Dtac expects to invest nearly $2 billion to expand 4G LTE infrastructure as well as it national backbone network during the 2016-2018 period, local press reported.
The company has plans to expand 4G LTE networks in both 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz bands.
Dtac currently has 25.3 subscribers in the mobile segment. The telco expects to end this year with 4.5 million 4G LTE subscribers compared to current 2.3 million.
