South Africa-based telecoms giant Vodacom Group, has said in a trading update that it has added 484,000 customers in South Africa in the last quarter, supported by a successful summer campaign.
The mobile operator said for the quarter ended December 2019, Group revenue was up 6.6% supported by Group service revenue growth of 5.7%.
Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO commented: “Our sustained investment programme, aimed at delivering a better experience for customers in each of the countries where we operate, continues to yield results. This is reflected in the additional 2 million customers that we connected during the quarter, contributing to growth of 6.6% in revenue for the Vodacom Group.
“We now serve over 117 million customers across the Group. As expected, growth trends improved across a number of metrics in South Africa following the significant impacts over the past year from our ongoing pricing transformation strategy. These included substantial cuts in out-of-bundle tariffs and lower bundle prices, resulting in a circa 50% decline in effective data prices since March 2016.”
Aside from growing its customer base across the group, Joosub pointed out that customers can expect to experience the benefit of Vodacom’s revised roaming deal with Rain, which will further expand its 4G capacity in an environment where delays in assigning available spectrum will constrain capacity for all networks.
He explained that having been the first network to commercially launch 5G in Africa through Vodacom Lesotho, the company expects to be able to launch 5G services in South Africa this year. “This is possible thanks to a recent roaming agreement with Liquid Telecom, as 5G spectrum is largely unassigned in South Africa,” he noted. “Vodacom remains committed to delivering on its pricing transformation strategy and has engaged constructively with relevant authorities, including the Competition Commission, to share the measures we intend to introduce in due course to further reduce data prices.”
Joosub added that a highly successful summer campaign, which delivered 33 4million free rewards to 17 million customers, contributed to an uplift in activity across the customer base. “This increase in data customers and usage is evidence of our success in transforming data pricing in South Africa,” he said.
He noted that contributions from the group’s Financial Services and Enterprise businesses saw service revenue in South Africa rise by 4.6% despite a subdued economy. “I am particularly pleased with the consistency in the performance of our international portfolio, which produced solid results on the back of strong demand for data and M-Pesa services, resulting in a 9% growth in service revenue,” he added. “Our operations outside South Africa now contribute over 40% to group service revenue. In January we had to disconnect 1.7 million customers in Tanzania, as a result of customer registration requirements, primarily due to the lack of government approved identification documents. This will have an impact on our growth in Tanzania, however we expect to reconnect many of these customers over the short to medium term once biometrically registered.”
