Telkom doubles down on Mobile
Telkom increased its investment in its mobile network by 35% between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023, the company’s annual results have revealed.
Over the same period, the company showed modest growth in mobile service revenue, which increased by 1.8% over the previous year to R17.82 billion.
Telkom also grew its mobile subscriber base by 7.8% from R16.94 million in March 2022 to 18.26 million as of 31 March 2023.
The partially state-owned telecoms company had invested R2.75 billion in its mobile network in the previous financial year. This increased to R3.72 billion as of 31 March 2023.
At the same time, it cut its capital expenditure on its fibre network, IT solutions, core network, and masts and towers.
“We continued to extend our network footprint, launching our 5G services and effectively utilising the newly procured spectrum, with a particular emphasis on the low-frequency band (800 MHz), to enhance coverage of our LTE services,” said Telkom Group CEO, Serame Taukobong.
“This benefited our mobile broadband subscriber base, which grew 9.2% to 11.6 million, representing 63.7% of our total mobile base now using wireless broadband.”
Regarding traffic volumes, Telkom Mobile customers used 1,167 petabytes — or nearly 1.2 billion gigabytes — over the year.
The company grew its mobile service revenue by 1.8% from R17.51 billion in March 2022 to R17.82 billion.
“Mobile service revenue growth of 1.8% resulted from the expansion of our total customer base, which grew pleasingly by 7.8% to 18.3 million customers at a blended average revenue per user (ARPU) of R86, driven by our competitive customer value propositions,” said Telkom Group CEO Serame Taukobong.
“Our post-paid strategy paid off as our customer base advanced by 11.0% to reach the 3.0 million mark at an ARPU of R201.”
“Our pre-paid base also continued growing by 7.2% to reach 15.3 million at an ARPU of R64,” he added.
However, ARPU in both the pre-paid and post-paid segments decreased slightly. In the 2021/22 financial year, Telkom’s revenue per pre-paid user sat at R65.76 and has since dropped to R63.74.
At the same time, post-paid ARPU dropped from R212.47 to R200.69. This resulted in the average ARPU from mobile subscribers falling from R89.94 to R86.43.
Regarding overall Telkom Mobile operating revenue, the company recorded a 4% increase to R21.62 billion.
This is despite mobile voice and subscription revenue declining 1.6% to R4.4 billion.
The primary drivers behind Telkom’s mobile revenue growth were a 4.8% increase in mobile interconnection revenue, a 2.9% increase in mobile data revenue, and a 14.8% increase in revenue from handset and equipment sales.
Interest revenue for Telkom Mobile grew 24.6% from 256 million to R319 million.
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