Vodacom’s impressive data growth, LTE rollout
Vodacom has released its quarterly update for the period ended 31 December 2014, which showed group revenue decreased by 1.1% to R19,993 million. Service revenue was down 2.7% to R15,815 million.
Looking at South Africa, Vodacom’s revenue declined by 3.1% to R15,987 million. This decline was mainly a result of declining service revenue.
“Service revenue declined 5.8% due to the 50% cut in MTRs in April 2014 and by increased competition and weaker consumer spending. Excluding the impact of MTRs, service revenue declined 1.7%,” Vodacom said.
Great data growth
The big news for Vodacom is data. Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub said that Vodacom’s total active data customers were up 16.4% to 26.5 million.
“Data traffic grew 62.2% in South Africa and almost threefold in international operations. Data now makes up 27.4% of service revenue,” said Joosub.
In South Africa data revenue grew 18.8% to R3,526 million, against exceptionally strong data growth in Q3 last year, to make up 29.7% of group service revenue.
“Data traffic in South Africa increased 62.2% (year-on-year) and active data customers increased to 16.8 million – or 53.4% of our active customers,” Vodacom said.
“Although our effective price per MB reduced by 26.5%, we maintained stable pricing quarter on quarter.”
Vodacom drove data adoption by increasing the number of data-capable devices on its network through its handset financing programme and through strong sales of its low-cost devices.
“The number of active smartphones and tablets on our network grew 23.6% to 9.5 million devices. Average monthly data usage was up 41.1% to 358MB on smartphones,” said Vodacom.
To support this boom in data demand, Vodacom invested in its mobile data network. This included an expansion of its LTE network.
“In South Africa, Vodacom’s LTE service now covers 34% of the population through 2,194 sites, while 3G population coverage is 94% through 8,407 sites,” said Joosub.
“77.8% of our sites are now connected to our self-provided high-capacity transmission network. We also launched our fibre-to-the-business on a limited basis in September 2014,” said Joosub.
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