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:ARPU is an acronym for average revenue per user or average revenue per unit.

This term is used by companies that offer subscription services to clients for example, telephone carriers, Internet Service Providers, and Hosters etc. It is a measure of the revenue generated by one customer phone, pager, etc., per month. In mobile telephony, ARPU includes not only the revenues billed to the customer each month for usage, but also the revenue generated from incoming calls, payable within the regulatory interconnection regime.

This provides the company a granular view at a per user or unit basis and allows it to track revenue sources and growth

There is a trend by telecommunications and Internet companies and their suppliers to sell extra services to users and a lot of the promotion that is used by these companies talks of increased ARPU for these operators. It typically manifests in the form of value-added extra services such as entertainment being sold to customers especially in markets where the primary service offered to the customer, such as the telephony or Internet service, is sold at a commodity rate.

A related (but less used) acronym is AMPU, for average margin per user.

ARPU is widely used by Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service providers”