{"id":546451,"date":"2005-06-08T07:34:57","date_gmt":"2005-06-08T07:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/546451-sa-s-second-mobile-boom.html"},"modified":"2005-06-08T07:34:57","modified_gmt":"2005-06-08T07:34:57","slug":"sa-s-second-mobile-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/546451-sa-s-second-mobile-boom.html","title":{"rendered":"SA\u2019s second mobile boom"},"content":{"rendered":"

The statistic refutes claims that the SA market is showing signs of maturation; Vodacom CEO Allan Knott-Craig says that the market could grow to 31-m subscribers, meaning that two in every three South Africans will have a cell phone (although he did not provide a time frame). \u201cWe said the ceiling would be 19-m subscribers three years ago and we have surpassed that,\u201d he said on Monday, speaking at the Vodacom and Telkom annual results presentation. \u201cLast year, we saw the biggest year-on-year growth in our 11 years of operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The success of South African operations (from which Vodacom derived 93,6% of its business, and 99% of its profits) propelled Vodacom\u2019s revenues up by 20% to R27-bn. Out of the five countries Vodacom operates in \u2013 the others being Tanzania, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique \u2013 South Africa saw the biggest growth in revenue, up 17,3% to R18,1-bn. In terms of earnings, the biggest percentage increase came from the fledgling Lesotho operation which made R48-m a 77,8% increase on the previous year. <\/p>\n

As a result, the group as a whole reported a 24% increase in profit to R6,5-bn, and maintained a profit from operations margin of 23%. <\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s shareholders \u2013 Telkom at 50%, the UK\u2019s Vodafone with 35% and the remainder owned by JSE-listed investment company Venfin \u2013 benefited from the good performance by sharing in the R3,4-bn dividend declared by Vodacom. <\/p>\n

Where to next?<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

As the first mobile operator to offer high-speed data transmission with the rollout of a third generation (3G) network, Vodacom views data as a strong potential growth area in the South African market. Vodacom has been offering 3G services, in conjunction with partner Vodafone, since December last year. <\/p>\n

Knott-Craig said the company has garnered around 14 000 3G subscribers to date, and that the average revenue per user (ARPU) of the service was three to four times that of other customers (the ARPU for both contract and pre-paid subscribers a month is R163: R624 for contract and R78 for pre-paid).<\/p>\n

In terms of catering for this growth, Knott-Craig said Vodacom has put up 480 3G base stations thus far, and that 900 would be up by December. He says 3G could make up one tenth of Vodacom\u2019s contract subscribers within the next three years. <\/p>\n

Also top of mind for Vodacom is having full control of its customer base. Over the past year, it bought a controlling stake in a service provider that sells Vodacom packages \u2013 Smartcom \u2013 and also acquired the Vodacom customer base from Tiscali South Africa. This leaves only the big two in the arena \u2013 Reunert\u2019s Nashua Mobile and Altech\u2019s Autopage Cellular. \u201cWe are in discussions with Nashua and Autopage and want to come up with a win-win solution,\u201d says Knott-Craig. \u201cThis could entail a continuation of the current scenario, but with Vodacom being able to get closer to its customers.\u201d According to the commentary to its results, Vodacom directly controls 78,3% of its contract customers and 98,4% of its pre-paid customers. <\/p>\n

The advent of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in South Africa \u2013 where companies buy excess network capacity from mobile companies, package and brand it then sell it onto customers \u2013 seems imminent, with legislation being amended to make this legal. In May, there were reports that Virgin would be entering the South African market as an MVNO, piggy-backing off the Cell C network. <\/p>\n

Knott-Craig says that should this materialise, the impact on Vodacom\u2019s revenue from the competition, \u201cif any, would be marginal. If anything, it will be more positive for us. All should be resolved within nine to 12 months\u201d. <\/font><\/p>\n

Original Article<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

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Vodacom, South Africa\u2019s biggest cellular company with just over half of the 23-m subscriber market, saw a 32% increase in the number of customers using its network for the year to end-March 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546451"}],"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=546451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}