Hutchison Telecommunications Australia (3) has released its first half results for the six months ending June 30th. Revenue increased 29.7 percent year-on-year to to AU$549.2 million (US$446.6 million) and its loss fell to AU$197 million (US$160.2 million). One good point is that Hutchison “has finally managed to cut a crippling interest bill after a share issue in June reduced its net debt from a whopping $3.6 billion to $1.03 billion”, reports the SMH. 3 increased its customer base by 34.6 percent to year-on-year to 1.405 million, and ARPU was AU$69 (US$56.1), which was up or down depending on what you measure it against—3 recently turned off its 2G service (ARPU of $65) and migrated those customers to its 3G service (ARPU of $73.88).

There are some interesting stats on content usage:
--3 non-voice revenue grew to $138.7 million, an increase of 74.7 percent
--Non-SMS data APRU was $7.10 for the first half, a decrease of 5.5 percent year-on-year.
--3 customers accessing Planet 3 rose 64.3 percent year-on-year to 1.055 million
--The number of “3 content events” rose by 35.7 percent year-on-year to 57 million
--The number of 3 customers generating a billed content event rose 31 percent to 635,000
--SMS numbers rose by 85.2 percent year-on-year to 589 million.

The increased number of people accessing the Planet 3 portal indicates that at least more people are becoming aware of the extra services available, even if only about 63 percent of those actually spent any money. Content ARPU was about 10.3 percent of total ARPU, which isn’t a bad figure.

Half-Year Earnings Report PDF