Vodacom Business means business

Vodacom Business was voted South Africa’s most-trusted enterprise telecommunications provider, an exceptional achievement considering the competition.

Vodacom Business was launched in February 2008 as a vehicle for the mobile operator to pursue opportunities in the broadband and ICT market.

The company positioned itself as a leading provider of converged communication solutions to the enterprise, business and SME market segments.

At the time, it competed with many first-tier ISPs, such as Internet Solutions, Verizon Business, MTN Network Solutions, Vox Telecom, and MWEB Business.

At the time, it boasted a fully converged self-provisioned IP core, last-mile access services, and international capacity.

It also had tier 4 carrier-grade data centres, 26 points of presence in South Africa, and international points of presence in London and New York.

Vodacom Business rapidly grew its presence in the South African business and enterprise market, outperforming its competitors.

Many of these competitors disappeared through market consolidation. The casualties included Internet Solutions, Verizon Business, and Mweb Business.

Vodacom Business, in comparison, accelerated its growth and expanded its product range, offering businesses of all sizes a full suite of IT and telecommunications products.

These offerings range from business Internet and voice services to Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud, hosting, and security products.

In recent years, it has also added payment solutions, business lending services, and insurance offerings to its products.

It has a full spectrum of clients, from large corporations and government clients to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Vodacom Business generated R17.3 billion in revenue in the last financial year. Cloud, hosting and security supported growth, with revenue for this segment up 38.5%.

Another Vodacom Business innovation is its converged portal, a free self-service mobile and fixed-line management tool.

It allows clients to manage their Vodacom Business Corporate, SMME and Government entities accounts and services from a single site.

Through the portal, clients can check their voice, data, and SMS balance status, check their accounts, and perform SIM swaps.

They can also recharge postpaid voice, data and SMS, upgrade contract lines, download invoices and statements, and log service requests.

The converged portal has helped Vodacom Business significantly improve its customer experience.

The portal has enabled the sale of more than 105,000 bundles and has more than 5,500 active users.

Vodacom Business has become engrained in the fabric of South Africa and Africa’s IT and financial sectors.

Kabelo Makwane, Vodacom Business’s managing executive for cloud, hosting, and security, said Vodacom Business is essentially the largest fintech company in Africa.

“From a database perspective, we have hundreds of millions of customers and are effectively the largest fintech company in Africa,” said Makwane.

“If we were to go down, governments and their financial systems would shut down,” he added.

Considering Vodacom Business’ significant achievements, it is unsurprising that it was voted South Africa’s most trusted and preferred enterprise telecommunications provider.

It ranked above many prominent telecommunications providers, including Telkom, MTN Business, NTT Data, Telkom, and Liquid Intelligent Technologies.

Vodacom Business growth

In the 2010 financial year, Vodacom Business reported service revenue of R729 million, contributing only 1.7% of the company’s total service revenue of R44.17 billion.

However, Vodacom Business achieved strong growth. In the 2024 financial year, Vodacom Business’ service revenue stood at R17.3 billion.

The graph below shows how Vodacom’s service revenue and Vodacom Business’s contribution to that revenue over the last fourteen years.