Vodacom over the 17 million customer mark
Vodacom’s South African customer base grew by 11.3% with a large chunk of this growth coming from the prepaid market which grew by a healthy 12.7% compared to the 5.8% growth for contract customers.
The South African market using Vodacom sits at 14.3 million with a hefty 12.3 million of those users on prepaid.
Vodacom attributes the rapid growth to high gross customer connections and the fact that the amount of customers discontinuing their Vodacom service was low.
Whilst the user base is growing, the users themselves are making less calls with the average revenue per user (ARPU) falling by 8% to R150 per month for the three months to June 30, 2005.
ARPU was negatively impacted by the increasing portion of prepaid customers in Vodacom’s total customer base coupled with lower usage per average customer.
Vodacom’s 3G offering which was opened to the public in December 2004 is doing well with the number of active users on the network up from 10,853 in March this year to 26,341 as of June 30, 2005.
The number of 3G base stations has increased with the user base growth from 487 stations in March to over double that, 964 base stations in June 2005. The growth in 3G base stations is of particular importance to users who want to be assured of connecting when they need to.
Loading ...