afrol News, 22 July - The Vodacom Group has announced double-digit year on year growth in the first quarter ended June 2009, saying its customer base increased by a total of 19.5 percent to 41.3 million and revenue to R14.2 billion compared to the same quarter last year.

The Vodacom Group CEO, Pieter Uys, said R800 million in this quarter was contributed by the Gateway , resulting in overall organic group revenue growth of 5.9 percent, with an 8.2 percent growth in South African operations, offset by the international operations revenues of 8.1 percent.

“With consumer spending under pressure, we focussed on promotional activities to our customers that offered more value, in line with the first leg of our growth strategy to grow our core mobile business,” he said.

He said in the second leg of the company’s strategy, which was to increase the mobile broadband penetration, tha saw the number of customers increasing by 98 000 in the first quarter, bringing the total mobile broadband customers to 825 000, adding that a further increase in telemetry broadband packages brought our total data connectivity customers to over one million.

Mr Uys said Vodacom South Africa has maintained its customer base and attracted new ones, now estimated at a total of 28.7 million, through innovative prepaid products, which he said represented 7.2 million customers as at 30 June 2009.

Vodacom has also said it’s unlikely to spend the R3.0 billion it budgeted this year for its operations in Africa excluding South Africa. The company has halted spending in Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, Mr Uys told the media today, while also saying the company was looking for more acquisitions in the region.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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