Vodacom surpasses 21 million customer mark

vodcaom surpasses 21 million?

they had 17 million in december if i remember right. presuming the 17 was before the million new ones they claim to have gotten in december, does that mean 3 million in the 25 days of january so far? if they have 21 million customers, mtn have in the region of 15 mil? and cell C have about 2? gives you 38 million cell phone users... considering there only about 45 mill people in the country including children and babies and people in prisons... quite a good number. they should just check they dont over rate their "customer base" to far and have more customers than people.

also, does my phone i had 7 years ago still count as a customer?
 
With those figures one wonder why prices and contract lengths shouldn't come down.
 
prices

exactly. at least telkom has brought the price on adsl down since launch as more and more people join. maby not enough but at least a bit.

vodacom has only gone up and up since first contract. weekender still go up like 7% every year, since first time it came out.

i dunno, sometimes i think i'm just on the wrong side of the fence.... :(
 
ic said:
@albert123, I doubt it's based on number of cellphones sold by retail outlets [although strange that the 3G figures were based on number of data cards sold].

IMO a more accurate & likely measure of the number of Vodacom customers, would be based on the number of regularly/recently active sim cards on the network.
<snip>
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And of course that's where the problem comes in - I personally have 3 active sim cards (one for my voda contract, 2 alternating for mtn data bundles). And I know that some people have even more... so those figures could be wildly inflated.

I guess when the new legislation comes in for requiring prepaid users to register with their SPs we'll have a truer picture (although I still think required registration for prepaid is a ridiculous idea).
 
albert123: Vodacom has 21 million subscribers across all it's basis, including other countries where it has operations going. I'm too lazy to look, but if memory serves me right it said that Vodacom SOUTH AFRICA has 17 million?
 
Dovi said:
albert123: Vodacom has 21 million subscribers across all it's basis, including other countries where it has operations going. I'm too lazy to look, but if memory serves me right it said that Vodacom SOUTH AFRICA has 17 million?
Click to expand...

well my point is, do they go on active numbers in the last 6 or 12 months? or sim cards sold since day 1?
 
This is great news as the complete Vodafone group's subscriber grew by 7.1 mil over the quarter. That means Vodacom is driving their subscriber figures. If you take Vodacom's figures for the quarter, it adds to about 2.5 mil. Or am I correct?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4642106.stm
 
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albert123 said:
well my point is, do they go on active numbers in the last 6 or 12 months? or sim cards sold since day 1?
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This question keeps coming up.

It's not on sim cards sold since day 1. They count the number of subscribers on the network by:

1) Those SIM cards which are tied to a contract PLUS......
2) Those prepaid SIM cards which have had any kind of OUTGOING activity thereon within the previous 215 days.

This means that if I had a Vodacom prepaid SIM card and I made two calls a year - one on 1 Jan and one on 1 August - then I would be considered an 'active' subscriber.

The way in which Vodacom determines the number of subscribers on their network renders what could potentially be useful and important indicators totally useless. (Side note: I have no idea how MTN and CellC calculate their subscriber base, but it's probably very similiar to how Vodacom do it).

A better indicator of what stated subscriber-base purports to represent is ARPU.

Vodacom's current ARPU is, to the best of my knowledge, less than half of MTN's current ARPU. In other words, one 'average' MTN subscriber generates more profit for MTN than TWO 'average' Vodacom subscribers generate for Vodacom.

ARPU: Average Revenue Per User (See here for more terms: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=27714&highlight=common+myadsl+words)
 
This is a bit of of data massage to give a nice result. Actually what Voda can say is that they have 21 Million active numbers on their network. Many of these "customers" do not exist, they are discarded pay-as-you-go numbers, or additional numbers for existing clients.

Lies, damn lies and statistics...
 
Debbie2 said:
This means that if I had a Vodacom prepaid SIM card and I made two calls a year - one on 1 Jan and one on 1 August - then I would be considered an 'active' subscriber.
Click to expand...

Why make a call..you can send an SMS?
 
Vodacom surpasses 21 million customer mark

Being a plain old human being myself, I would assume that the title means that Vodacom has 21 million customers who:

A) probably have their phone on more than once a week at the least
B) make at least one call per week, or send an sms at least once per week
C) make use of some or other service offered by the network at least once a month

Basically - active users. Which most of them are probably not I assume, considering Debbies post?
 
arf9999 said:
Why make a call..you can send an SMS?
Click to expand...

Cos if you are on pay-per-second.... :D

An interesting calculation I did in my honours degree paper was to compare the 'rental' MTN charges on pre-paid SIMs with the Telkom rental charges. By 'rental' I mean 'airtime' or 'payment required in order to stay connected to the network'.

I worked out that, in theory, R30 buys you about 10 days of connectivity to Telkom's network. In contrast, R30 buys you over 700 YEARS [edit: sorry, it's 500 YEARS] of connectivity to the MTN network.

I strongly argue that in order to increase fixed-line teledensity in SA, the most basic aspect to be addressed by Telkom is their rental-tariff structure.
 
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Debbie2 said:
I strongly argue that in order to increase fixed-line teledensity in SA, the most basic aspect to be addressed by Telkom is their rental-tariff structure.
Click to expand...
In developed countries line rental is maybe higher yes, but call charges are less.

THOSE are the people with brains, the first world countries and telco's. And here we are, sitting in South Africa surrounded by people and telcos with the intelligence of a piece of tree bark.
 
ic said:
Debbie2, does that mean that one average MTN subscriber is being charged more than 2 average Vodacom subscribers :confused:.What about a free 'please call me'? :D
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I thought this figure quoted by MyADSL was too low, so I went to double check on facts. Seems that the article on which this thread is based has a mistake - it reads "R44" instead of "R144". Anyone want to do the maths to get the ARPU of the new Vodacom customers independent of their ARPU when merged with subscribers on network pre-September: http://www.vodacom.co.za/mccrdetail.do?id=438&action=detail

As this ARPU figure was mistated, it is no longer true to say that MTN's ARPU is more than double Vodacom's. I think it is slightly higher than R144/month though.
 
ic said:
Debbie2, does that mean that one average MTN subscriber is being charged more than 2 average Vodacom subscribers :confused:
Click to expand...

...er...sort of. Although it seems that the difference is not double, MTN's average customer generally does spend more than that of Vodacom (the most recent ARPU for MTN that I can find is R168 - i.e. 16% higher than Voda). This is due the the mix of account types. MTN has a higher percentage of contract users vs pre-paid than Voda. These users are generally higher value.

This may change now with the lead that Voda has in terms of Data and value added services (e.g. Vodafone Live etc..).
 
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