{"id":314445,"date":"2019-07-26T12:57:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T10:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=314445"},"modified":"2019-07-26T12:58:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T10:58:31","slug":"vodacom-is-losing-data-customers-here-is-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/314445-vodacom-is-losing-data-customers-here-is-why.html","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom is losing data customers &#8211; Here is why"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business-telecoms\/314407-out-of-bundle-data-price-cuts-hurting-vodacom-in-south-africa.html\"><strong>Vodacom released a trading update<\/strong><\/a> for the quarter ended 30 June 2019, which revealed that the company added 608,000 customers in South Africa over the quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the growth in subscribers, <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/331213\/vodacom-revenue-declines-in-south-africa-despite-customer-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Vodacom South Africa\u2019s service revenue declined<\/strong><\/a> by 1.2% to R12.6 billion.<\/p>\n<p>This, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub said, was a result of the proactive reduction in out-of-bundle data prices, data usage regulations, and the transition between national roaming partners.<\/p>\n<p>The regulations prompted mobile networks to reduce out-of-bundle (OOB) data prices and automatically block OOB usage, with customers having the option to opt-in to OOB billing.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Decline in data customers<\/h3>\n<p>One of the surprises in Vodacom\u2019s results was a decline in data customers in South Africa \u2013 down from 20.434 million in June 2018 to 19.930 million in June 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom spokesperson Byron Kennedy told MyBroadband the decline of 504,000 data users was the result of a combination of factors.<\/p>\n<p>These factors include proactive measures to reduce churn on prepaid SIM cards as well as new ICASA regulations which have slightly reduced the number of customers with incidental data usage.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Big increase in data traffic<\/h3>\n<p>Despite the reduction in data customers, data traffic increased by 51.9%, an acceleration from the previous quarter\u2019s growth of 42.0%.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have seen an increase in the migration of customers to larger bundles as customers consume more data through our shorter validity period bundles,\u201d Vodacom said.<\/p>\n<p>The company added that the proportion of bundles sold above 100MB almost doubling year-on-year while data bundle sales increased 6.3% to 233,000.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAverage usage on smart devices increased 52.2% to 1.2GB, with ample room for further growth. 4G take up continues to grow, with devices increasing 28.1% to 10.4 million,\u201d Vodacom said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business-telecoms\/314407-out-of-bundle-data-price-cuts-hurting-vodacom-in-south-africa.html\">Out-of-bundle data price cuts hurting Vodacom in South Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom lost around 500,000 data customers over the last year. Here is what is behind this decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":273557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,1958,41],"class_list":["post-314445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314621,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314445\/revisions\/314621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}