Quadruple-play Canadian operator Rogers has posted a net profit of CAD374 million (USD346 million) for the three months to the end of June 2009, up from CAD301 million a year before, on revenues that rose by 3% from CAD2.80 billion in 2Q 2008 to CAD2.89 billion a year later. Growth was partly driven by the addition of more lucrative contract mobile customers, as Rogers signed up 148,000 net new post-paid users, better than the 92,000 it added in the same period last year. Rogers activated a gross total of 315,000 3G smartphone devices in the second quarter, with the market led by Apple’s iPhone 3G, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Google’s Android; the company said around half of this number were new users. The operator noted that the weak economy had the overall effect of slowing growth across its basic cable TV, digital cable, internet, and fixed line home phone services, whilst also influencing blended mobile ARPU to drop to CAD63.09 in 2Q09 from CAD64.56 in 2Q08, as ‘customers curtail travel and adjust their wireless usage during the economic recession’, according to a statement. Accordingly, Rogers cut its outlook for the full-year, with revenue growth now forecast at between 2% and 4%, down from a previous prediction of 5%-9%.
Meanwhile, Rogers made sure it stayed ahead of its domestic wireless competitors in terms of technology yesterday when it announced it had begun rolling out an HSPA+ network upgrade to give top download speeds of 21Mbps, or nearly three times as fast as its current maximum HSDPA network performance. Users in the Greater Toronto area will have access to faster data speeds in August, and Rogers says it will progressively increase speeds up to 21Mbps for those customers, whilst expanding the service over the coming months to other cities across the country.