![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Vodacom-execs-2003-Sun-City-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/a>Alan Knott-Craig (right) with Johan Engelbrecht, Andries Delport, Chris Ross, Pieter Uys, and Barry Vlok in the front row.<\/p><\/div>\n
Knott-Craig created an exceptional management team, including former Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys, current Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub, and former CTO Andries Delport.<\/p>\n
Under his leadership, Vodacom focused on innovation and was behind many world firsts in the mobile industry.<\/p>\n
There was a particularly strong focus on network quality. Knott-Craig was fanatical about having the best mobile network in South Africa and went to extreme lengths to achieve it.<\/p>\n
Vodacom and MTN rapidly expanded coverage across South Africa and rolled out the latest technologies as soon as they become available.<\/p>\n
Despite the fierce competition between the two telecoms powerhouses, the lead Vodacom established against MTN in the nineties is still there today.<\/p>\n
Here are a few of the highlights from Vodacom over the last thirty years.<\/p>\n
\n
1993 \u2013 Vodacom is founded as a joint venture between Telkom (50%), Vodafone (35%), and Venfin (15%).<\/h3>\n
Editorial credit: Sunshine Seeds \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n Vodafone logo on building. Credit: DELBO ANDREA \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n Sun City by oNabby \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n Pieter Uys<\/p><\/div>\n Editorial credit: VladanRadulovicjhb \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n Shameel Joosub, Vodacom CEO<\/p><\/div>\n Alipay by Andy Feng \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n Addis Ababa by Hailu Wudineh TSEGAYE \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n This article was first published by Daily Investor<\/a><\/strong> and is republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n Vodacom’s origins date back to 1991 when an investigation into the cellphone industry in South Africa began. The outcome showed that the future would be in GSM technology and Vodacom was founded in 1993.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341127,"featured_media":467667,"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":[681,70910,35,42,109,85595,41,1789],"class_list":["post-487825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-anton-rupert","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-venfin","tag-vodacom","tag-vodafone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487825"}],"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\/341127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487883,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487825\/revisions\/487883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
\nApril 1994 \u2013 South Africa\u2019s first democratic elections are held, during which the government agreed to a limited test phase before commercial switch-on. 1,250 cell phones were distributed to election officials.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1994 \u2013 Vodacom\u2019s network is officially switched on, and it launches commercial mobile voice services. Vodacom connected 10,000 customers on the first day, with 50,000 in the first four weeks and 100,000 in the first five months.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1995 \u2013 Vodacom expanded outside of South Africa after being awarded a license to operate in Lesotho.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1995 \u2013 Vodacom sponsors the South African national rugby team, the Springboks, winners of the 1995 Rugby World Cup.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1996 \u2013 The erection of Vodacom\u2019s first cellular mast disguised as a palm tree in Durbanville, Western Cape.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1996 \u2013 Vodacom launched Vodago, its prepaid service, and connected 60,000 customers in the first month.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1996 \u2013 Vodafone and Venfin sold a 5% stake in Vodacom to Hosken Consolidated Investments, A BEE company, for R118 million.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1998 \u2013 Vodacom launches prepaid dialup Internet access \u2013 a world first.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1998 \u2013 Vodacom opens Vodaworld in Midrand, the world\u2019s first cellular shopping mall.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n1999 \u2013 Vodacom is awarded a GSM license in Tanzania.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2000 \u2013 Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig with many of his executives.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2000 \u2013 Vodafone acquired a 40% holding in SafariCom, the largest mobile operator in Kenya. SafariCom became an important strategic partner for Vodacom.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2001 \u2013 Vodacom becomes Tanzania\u2019s largest mobile network provider after one year of operations. It provides coverage to Mount Kilimanjaro, which became the highest point in the world to be covered by a GSM network.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2001 \u2013 Vodacom completes its R124 million Century City regional headquarters in Cape Town.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2002 \u2013 Hosken sold its 5% stake back to Vodafone and Venfin for R1.5 billion, through which it made a 1,171% profit. Vodacom launches in the DRC.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2003 \u2013 Vodacom launched in Mozambique.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2003 \u2013 Vodacom\u2019s coverage extends to more than 900,000 square kilometres of South Africa\u2019s roads and over 95% of the population.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2004 \u2013 Vodacom launches 3G in South Africa. 3G technology dramatically increased the speed of data transmission.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2004 \u2013 Vodacom South Africa surpasses the 10 million customer mark.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2005 \u2013 Vodacom launched Vodafone Live! in South Africa.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2006 \u2013 Vodafone increases its shareholding in Vodacom to 50%.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2006 \u2013 Vodacom launches a 3G High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) network in South Africa. Vodacom Ventures launched.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2007 \u2013 Vodacom buys a stake in WBS\/iBurst.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2008 \u2013 Vodacom Business launched at a glitzy affair in Sun City.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2008 \u2013 Pieter Uys took over from Alan Knott-Craig as Vodacom CEO on 1 October 2008.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2008 \u2013 Telkom sold a 15% share of their holding in Vodacom for R22.5 billion. This is regarded as one of the biggest blunders in South African telecommunications history.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2009 \u2013 Vodacom listed on the JSE. Vodafone increased its shareholding in Vodacom to 65%.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2011 \u2013 Vodacom rebranded and changed its logo colour from blue to red.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2012 \u2013 Vodacom is the first network to launch LTE in South Africa.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2012 \u2013 Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub takes over from Pieter Uys.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2013 \u2013 Vodacom announced a R7 billion deal to acquire Neotel, but the deal later fell through.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2014 \u2013 Vodacom covers 99.8% of the population in South Africa.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2015 \u2013 Vodacom reaches 65 million active customers.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2018 \u2013 Vodacom launched commercial 5G in Lesotho. It was a first in Africa.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2020 \u2013 Vodacom donates 20,000 smartphones, 100 terabytes of data, and 10 million voice call minutes to the National Department of Health to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2020 \u2013 Vodacom signs a landmark agreement with Alipay to drive digital and financial inclusion.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2021 \u2013 Vodacom enters the largest deal in its history, exchanging R43 billion to acquire Vodafone\u2019s Egypt operations.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2021 \u2013 Vodacom launches the VodaPay super app in South Africa.<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n2022 \u2013 Safaricom Ethiopia switches on its network and services in Addis Ababa. Through its 34.9% stake in Safaricom and its 6.2% direct stake in Safaricom Ethiopia, Vodacom Group holds an effective 25.7% interest in the Safaricom Ethiopia business.<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n2023 \u2013 Vodacom turns 30!<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nNow read:\u00a0Vodacom and Netstar bringing free Wi-Fi to taxis<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"