Cape Town - Data is growing among South Africans as Vodacom looks to data traffic as a driver of revenue.
"Data is still booming with revenue up 22%," Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub told News24 as the mobile operator released its annual results on Monday.
The data growth makes up 18% of revenue in SA and Vodacom has moved to expand its network by building an additional 1 700 3G base stations in SA.
Joosub said that the average data use per smartphone on the network had increased by 33.4% to 143MB per month.
"It's a couple of things driving the growth: One is obviously the active programme to increase the data growth by putting more smartphones in the hands of users," he said.
Free data
The operator also offers customers free data to convince them to use the service and that, combined with financing plans for smartphones, has contributed to increasing smartphone users to six million, an increase of 26%.
"That's resulted in us increasing the number of smartphones on the base by 1.2 million to six million smartphones on the base," Joosub said.
In past year, Vodacom has spent R9.5bn on its network in SA as the company sees the integrity of the network as a competitive differentiator.
Joosub said that the actions to gain market share is showing success.
"We gained 3.8 million customers and now we have over 51.7 million customers across the group."
Vodacom hinted at a successful adoption by South Africans of the company's higher speed LTE (Long Term Evolution) network though the process is largely held up by the regulator.
Vodacom revealed that there are 165 000 LTE-capable devices on the network, underlying the move toward data consumption growing at a better rate than voice.
The operator will have around 1 000 LTE base stations by the end of 2013, but the spectrum to deliver 4G services remains locked at a policy level.
Complex issues
In 2011, department of communications minister Roy Padayachie alluded to the complexities facing his department in the allocation of spectrum.
"Unfortunately in the South African landscape, this problem is overlaid with very complex issues of race and colour and the way that it dominates the landscape of the economy," said Padayachie.
Data traffic continues to make an impact on the Vodacom bottom line, and expectations are that the trend of data growth over voice will continue in the medium term.
"We now have 14.4 million customers using data, so 47.5% of our base is now using data," said Joosub.
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"Data is still booming with revenue up 22%," Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub told News24 as the mobile operator released its annual results on Monday.
The data growth makes up 18% of revenue in SA and Vodacom has moved to expand its network by building an additional 1 700 3G base stations in SA.
Joosub said that the average data use per smartphone on the network had increased by 33.4% to 143MB per month.
"It's a couple of things driving the growth: One is obviously the active programme to increase the data growth by putting more smartphones in the hands of users," he said.
Free data
The operator also offers customers free data to convince them to use the service and that, combined with financing plans for smartphones, has contributed to increasing smartphone users to six million, an increase of 26%.
"That's resulted in us increasing the number of smartphones on the base by 1.2 million to six million smartphones on the base," Joosub said.
In past year, Vodacom has spent R9.5bn on its network in SA as the company sees the integrity of the network as a competitive differentiator.
Joosub said that the actions to gain market share is showing success.
"We gained 3.8 million customers and now we have over 51.7 million customers across the group."
Vodacom hinted at a successful adoption by South Africans of the company's higher speed LTE (Long Term Evolution) network though the process is largely held up by the regulator.
Vodacom revealed that there are 165 000 LTE-capable devices on the network, underlying the move toward data consumption growing at a better rate than voice.
The operator will have around 1 000 LTE base stations by the end of 2013, but the spectrum to deliver 4G services remains locked at a policy level.
Complex issues
In 2011, department of communications minister Roy Padayachie alluded to the complexities facing his department in the allocation of spectrum.
"Unfortunately in the South African landscape, this problem is overlaid with very complex issues of race and colour and the way that it dominates the landscape of the economy," said Padayachie.
Data traffic continues to make an impact on the Vodacom bottom line, and expectations are that the trend of data growth over voice will continue in the medium term.
"We now have 14.4 million customers using data, so 47.5% of our base is now using data," said Joosub.
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