Vodacom African Subscriber Base Passes 17 Million
As at June 30, 2005, South Africa's Vodacom Group recorded 17.2 million customers on its networks operating in South Africa and other African countries, an 11.2% increase in the three months since March 31, 2005. The Group's international operations comprise 2.9 million customers, or 17.0% of the total customer base.
The rapid growth in the South African customer base is a result of high gross customer connections, combined with low churn for the quarter caused by a clean up of the customer base in March 2005. Vodacom was the first operator to introduce a commercial 3G offering into the local market in December 2004. The take up by customers during this initial period of deployment continues to be encouraging, with the number of active 3G users on the network as at June 30, 2005 being 26,341 (March 31, 2005: 10,853).
Vodacom's other African operations increased its total customer base by 10.7% since March 31, 2005 to 2.9 million customers. Satisfactory customer growth was enjoyed in all Vodacom's other African operations, most notably Tanzania with a 14.9% increase in its customer base. However, customer growth has also been negated by higher churn, with the exception of Tanzania.
In real terms, ARPUs have declined in all the other African operations, offset by the depreciation in the Rand. The decline in ARPUs is due to the penetration into the lower spending prepaid market, as well as continued high levels of competition in all of these markets."
Posted to the site on 3rd August 2005
