South Africa - Vodacom reporting significant increased in mobile broadband usage

[mybroadband] Vodacom shows a significant increase in their South African data bundle users, boosting revenue and traffic

Vodacom released their interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2010, showing good revenue growth across its operations.

One area which showed particularly strong growth is its broadband and data services. Vodacom’s data revenue increased 39.2% to R2.746-billion as demand for data services remained high.

Data users increased by 1.2-million in the six month period to reach 7.9-million at 30 September 2010, of which 1.9-million were active data bundle users. Active smartphones on the Vodacom SA network were up 65.0% to 2.5-million.

Over the last year Vodacom South Africa’s mobile connect card subscribers have grown 46.1% to 916,000 while the company now has 1.853-million data bundle users in the country.

When looking at Vodacom’s total number of data users (hence not only broadband subscribers) the figures are equally impressive. The company now has 7,913,000 data users across its SA network, up from 6.685-million six months ago.

Over the last six months Vodacom added 351 3G base stations to its mobile broadband network, increasing 3G population coverage to 57.0%. Vodacom’s total network is currently 14.4 Mbps enabled, with 1,800 HSPA+ sites.

Vodacom invested heavily in its own fixed line network, trenching 831km of fibre during the last six months, allowing the company to carry over 50% of traffic on its own core network. Vodacom further increased its undersea cable capacity on SEACOM, SAT-3/SAFE and EASSy.

Vodacom’s SA network traffic showed steady growth over the last yeast. The company grew its total traffic from 39.1 petabytes to 54.7 petabytes per half-year, with data accounting for over 50% of total traffic.

Vodacom broadband: Petabytes of traffic