Thailand's mobile industry may face an unprecedented contraction in revenue growth this year in the face of new airtime charges on a per-second basis.
But profit growth for mobile operators will remain healthy this year, thanks to the sharp fall in operating costs due to the shift from concession-based payment to a licensing regime, said Chaiwat Arsirawichai, deputy vice-president of UOB Kay Hian Securities (Thailand).
However, he said the profit growth projection of mobile operators had been revised to 14% this year, down from the initial estimate of 20%, due to the per-second charging scheme.
Mr Chaiwat said overall industry voice revenue was expected to decline by 10-20% per month in a market worth 9.6 billion baht.
Although operators saw a sharp increase in higher-margin data revenue, this could not offset flagging voice revenue.
"The local mobile industry looks set to see a contraction of 5% this year, compared with flat growth projected earlier," he said.
The local mobile industry was worth 234 billion baht, with flat growth. Of the total, 60% came from voice service and the remainder from data.
"We expect data revenue to account for half of the total this year," Mr Chaiwat added.
The overall industry's profit grew by 23% in 2014, thanks to the sharp decline in operating costs. Operators now pay only 5.25% of their total revenue on licence fees, compared with 20-25% under the concession-based system.
Mr Chaiwat said price competition in the local mobile data business would ease this year with fewer offerings for unlimited data plans, as operators have achieved success by migrating their customers from 2G to 3G services.
Up to 80% of the country's mobile phone subscribers have signed up for 3G services, expected to rise to 95% this year.
The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission recently reported that Thailand has 103 million mobile subscribers, 73.5 million of which use 3G services on the 2100-megahertz spectrum.
Mr Chaiwat said that mobile operators' profit would continue growing over the next two years, helped by the upcoming 4G spectrum auction, which is expected to increase their data revenue.
4G data tariff plans are likely to be at least 10-20% higher than for 3G service, he said.
Average revenue per mobile user in Thailand is US$7 per month, compared with an average of $30 per user in Asia-Pacific.
However, Neeranuch Kanokvilairat, senior market analyst of IDC Research (Thailand), said the per-second charges would not have a serious impact on operators' revenue as data is the core business. Operators could take the per-second charge as an opportunity to promote their voice services to boost revenue.