Massive Vodacom mobile data growth in South Africa
Vodacom has reported service revenue growth in South Africa of 2.8% to R11.7 billion for the quarter ending 30 June 2015.
This was driven by strong data revenue growth of 34.8% to R3.9 billion.
“We invested another R2.4 billion in the network this quarter as part of the accelerated capital investment programme started towards the end of the 2014 financial year, resulting in wider coverage and faster connection speeds,” said Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub.
Vodacom said the increased capacity supported data traffic growth of 45.7% in South Africa and 140.4% in its international operations, which in turn led to data revenue increasing 35.2% across the group.
In South Africa, Vodacom said its 3G service covers 96.4% of the population, while LTE covers 40.9% of the population.
“We increased the number of 3G sites in our International operations by 49.8%,” said Joosub.
There are around 12 million smart devices active on the Vodacom network in South Africa, which Joosub said is almost 3 million more than last year.
Smartphone users on Vodacom in South Africa use an average of 408MB per month, an increase of 24.8%, while tablets users consumed 774MB per month, on average.