Malaysia’s DiGi reported a strong financial performance across all revenue streams last year, with rising smartphone usage fuelling double-digit growth in data revenue.

Increased smartphone penetration, which jumped more than 10 percentage points to 49.3 per cent from a year ago, helped the company boost data revenue by 17.4 per cent. Data revenues accounted for 40 per cent of its overall service revenues in Q4. Data traffic expanded 86 per cent last year.

CEO Lars Norling said improved network performance and coverage, and a wide range of affordable smartphones bundles, together with prominent smartphone launches, drove solid growth across all its services.

The operator, which is 49 per cent owned by Norway’s Telenor, said a 31 per cent increase in subscribers signing up for internet plans drove a 40 per cent jump in internet revenue in 2014. It said 56 per cent of its 11.4 million subscribers now have internet plans.

DiGi is the country’s third largest operator with a 27 per cent market share, behind Celcom (31 per cent) and Maxis (30 per cent).

Its net profit last year rose 19 per cent to MYR2.03 billion ($558 million), while overall revenue grew by 4.2 per cent to MYR7.02 billion.

Norling said DiGi plans to maintain its capex this year at last year’s level of MYR904 million. Last year it expanded its 3G coverage to 86 per cent of the population. It also rolled out LTE sites in nine market centres, increased its fibre network to more than 4,700km and installed a new convergent billing system.

The company said its EBITDA rose about 6 per cent to MYR3.2 billion and its EBITDA margin held steady at 45 per cent.