8ta grows subscriber base to over 1 million

Just playing with numbers. Tell us, what happened with the 700k who RICAd and are no longer active? And why bother mention them anyway? Or did they realise that 8ta is BS!!! With the attitude of your sales teams, you WILL not get anywhere. Ntate Mahraj, should either seek autonomy or start looking for a new employer.
 
Vodacom & MTN should be scared.... very very scared. 8ta is gunning for the number1 spot.
 
That arpu implies less than 30 million a year in revenue... lol well done telkom.

My local spar does more revenue... brilliant.

Eating gingerbread off my Galaxy S, baked by Darky.
 
There is a disconnect in this story, either that, or colour me stupid;

8ta launched when RICA was active. It should not have been possible to sign with 8ta without completing RICA?

You say:
8ta was launched on 14 October 2010, and by 31 March 2011 the company signed up 1,199,596 subscribers that have completed the RICA process.

But then you say:

"Telkom CEO Pinky Moholi revealed that 8ta has 473,604 active subscribers, made up of 440,775 prepaid users and 32,829 post paid users."

So which is it? :confused:
 
Cost Conscious said:
You say:
8ta was launched on 14 October 2010, and by 31 March 2011 the company signed up 1,199,596 subscribers that have completed the RICA process.

But then you say:

"Telkom CEO Pinky Moholi revealed that 8ta has 473,604 active subscribers, made up of 440,775 prepaid users and 32,829 post paid users."

So which is it? :confused:
Click to expand...

A RICA'd subscriber is anyone who has registered for a 8.ta SIM card. However, if none of them made a single revenue generating call, then they are not active.

So basically, about 700k people RICA'd (1.2M - 473k active) and did not make a single call .... unless 8.ta is measuring active subs in a different way to what I understand above.
 
8ta was launched on 14 October 2010, and by 31 March 2011 the company signed up 1,199,596 subscribers that have completed the RICA process.

Telkom CEO Pinky Moholi revealed that 8ta has 473,604 active subscribers, made up of 440,775 prepaid users and 32,829 post paid users.
Click to expand...

Impressive that they racked up 1.2 million subscribers already, of which roughly 0.5 million are active, in the short space of 5 and half months. Compare this to Virgin Mobiles record over the last 3 years, and it looks even better. On the other hand, they've already lost 0.7 million subscribers (no longer active), more than half their total subscriber base. Something's definitely wrong.

The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for 8ta’s prepaid subscribers is R15.86 while contract subscribers on average spend R238.57 per month – with an average ARPU across the subscriber base of R22.60.
Click to expand...

These prepaid ARPU figures are extremely low. I think Vodacom's and MTN's prepaid ARPU is between R60 and R90 if I recall correctly, and Contract ARPU is between R300 and R350.

All the above indicates to me that most people are still testing the waters with 8.ta. Nobody really trusts them, but with good offers, people are willing to give it a go. Sounds like alot of people did give it a go, but then left, for some reason. Perhaps most of these people are using the SIM cards for the free calls to a single specified Telkom number, or perhaps 8.ta hasn't managed to shake off the perception that consumers have of their parent company.
 
msm said:
A RICA'd subscriber is anyone who has registered for a 8.ta SIM card. However, if none of them made a single revenue generating call, then they are not active.

So basically, about 700k people RICA'd (1.2M - 473k active) and did not make a single call .... unless 8.ta is measuring active subs in a different way to what I understand above.
Click to expand...

So we must believe that 700,000 people did not make a single billable call? Sounds fishy...!
 
These 8ta figures are extremely poor. Telkom has even massaged the headline to make them look good.
An active subscriber is a subscriber who has made an outgoing call in the previous 3 months. Therefore 8ta has under 500k subscribers.
Secondly remember that Telkom has included its own staff who have ported from Vodacom to 8ta - that number could be up to 20k of the postpaid subscribers.
The high churn rate in the numbers could also be because they gave away free simcards at launch loaded with free air time but the subscribers belong elsewhere.
The prepaid figure ARPU is even more shocking because it appears to be made of 3rd and 4th simcard subscribers.
 
Cost Conscious said:
So we must believe that 700,000 people did not make a single billable call? Sounds fishy...!
Click to expand...

Yup seems to be. Remember, 8ta did a lot of promotion work, giving out free sim cards and RICA'ing at the same time. Many of those users probably have the sim stored somewhere with no real use for it
 
LOL @ 8ta - especially the ARPU figures. But then, it's understandable if you consider their advertising campaigns, they're clearly not targeting the high-end consumers.

As a comparison, Vodacoms ARPU figures:
Total ARPU: R157
Prepaid: R87
Contract: R404
 
Muasulai said:
Just playing with numbers. Tell us, what happened with the 700k who RICAd and are no longer active? And why bother mention them anyway? Or did they realise that 8ta is BS!!! With the attitude of your sales teams, you WILL not get anywhere. Ntate Mahraj, should either seek autonomy or start looking for a new employer.
Click to expand...

Agree ! 100%

Theres a lot Mr Maharaj can do for 8ta.

Per second billing across all products - Prepaid

Lower the cost of Mobile to Fixed - 45c per minute.

Free minutes 8ta to 8ta/Telkom Fixed

Lower Data charges

Copy Cell-c idea of bundled Vouchers with Minutes-SMS-Data

Get people hooked onto 8ta to telkom calling.
This would make people aquire telkom fixed lines and their mobile product.
But Maharaj must go................for 8ta to succeed

DXL - Team
 
DXL said:
Agree ! 100%

Theres a lot Mr Maharaj can do for 8ta.

Per second billing across all products - Prepaid

Lower the cost of Mobile to Fixed - 45c per minute.

Free minutes 8ta to 8ta/Telkom Fixed

Lower Data charges

Copy Cell-c idea of bundled Vouchers with Minutes-SMS-Data

Get people hooked onto 8ta to telkom calling.
This would make people aquire telkom fixed lines and their mobile product.
But Maharaj must go................for 8ta to succeed

DXL - Team
Click to expand...

Amith Maharaj must go?? Are you crazy? He's probably the only person in Telkom's management team with half a brain, and he's doing quite well in my opinion, though it's still early days.

8.ta is already a rather exciting and interesting development from Telkom's side. Their marketing campaign and branding is catchy, youthful, energetic and new, and their products are (somewhat) innovative and bring new offers to the market. These are things that are in stark contrast to the Telkom of today that we love to hate.

If Amith Maharaj has to leave, who will he be replaced with? Another political appointment? Another BEE candidate? This dude is probably the best thing that his happened to Telkom management in the last 10 years. He is an engineer, is young, and has some pretty good ideas.

I think he needs more time to prove himself, but he is already doing relatively well in a very tough market and tough local and global economic climate.
 
I bought (and RICA'd) a sim card to check their data usage experience in a USB modem, but have not made any calls yet (my dongle cannot make calls ;) ). Do I count as an active user?
 
ToxicWazte said:
Impressive that they racked up 1.2 million subscribers already, of which roughly 0.5 million are active, in the short space of 5 and half months. Compare this to Virgin Mobiles record over the last 3 years, and it looks even better. On the other hand, they've already lost 0.7 million subscribers (no longer active), more than half their total subscriber base. Something's definitely wrong.

These prepaid ARPU figures are extremely low. I think Vodacom's and MTN's prepaid ARPU is between R60 and R90 if I recall correctly, and Contract ARPU is between R300 and R350.

All the above indicates to me that most people are still testing the waters with 8.ta. Nobody really trusts them, but with good offers, people are willing to give it a go. Sounds like alot of people did give it a go, but then left, for some reason. Perhaps most of these people are using the SIM cards for the free calls to a single specified Telkom number, or perhaps 8.ta hasn't managed to shake off the perception that consumers have of their parent company.
Click to expand...
I think they quoted actual ARPU and did not annualise it. Still low but not bad for a start up in a market where VC and MTN dominate the sales channels and do their best to block out all competition.

473k = current active users as at 31 March 2011. If a sim is dormant / has not been recharged for 90 days then it is deactivated. I experienced this first hand. Loaded some airtime in October and received an sms last week saying my account had been deactivated. To re-activate it I had to load some airtime and use the sim, even though it still had around R30 left on it.

Also agree with your comment about Amith - him and his team are definitely doing something right! Now that Telkom's closed period is over I think you'll see plenty more communication from Amith and company...
 
So many people slamming a network that was just launched?? That's not fair. Comparing GWM with Toyota or VW is not fair so why is it fair to compare 8ta with MTN and Vodacom that has been here for ages and I mean ages.

Comparing a 9 month average with a 20+ average is not fair either. I think 8ta is actually a very decent new ISP. It just has so much going for it now that I won't be surprised the day one would assume another person is using 8ta instead of any of the other networks.

I don't pick side but I don't slam for no reason.
 
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