Vodacom's customers top 56m in December

Vodacom has posted a 12.3% increase in active customers to 56.0m in the December quarter from a year earlier‚ with active data customers growing by 27.9% to 23.7m.

Vodacom's Shameel Joosub says networks investment are paying off. Image: Vodacom

In its quarterly update released on Wednesday (5 February)‚ the telecommunications group said its revenue was up 10.5% to R20.219bn‚ with SA accounting for the bulk of this.

Vodacom said that group service revenue was up 6.4% to R16.248bn and in line with its forecast.

Total revenue in SA grew by 6.6% to R16.502bn in the quarter‚ boosted by a 26.9% growth in equipment revenue.

"This quarter highlights once again that our strategy of sustained network investment is key to allow us to grow our overall business while still driving down the cost to communicate‚" Vodacom's chief executive Shameel Joosub said.

"In SA‚ as an example‚ we have continued with our pricing transformation to drive the adoption of price plans that offer more value to customers‚ which has reduced the prepaid average price per minute by 25.3% to 56c and the average effective price per megabyte of data by 16.2%."

Service revenue internationally grew 32.6% to R3.695bn‚ supported by 22.8% growth in active customers to 25.0m mainly as a result of the success of street vendor channel‚ expanded network coverage and competitive bundled offers.