The Vodacom Group reported results on Monday morning, shedding light on the behavioural shifts the telecoms industry is seeing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Vodacom South Africa reported in its interim results that it has seen a 64 percent year-on-year growth in data consumed by “smart devices,” which includes smartphones and tablets.
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The shift has been mostly driven by the country’s pandemic lockdown. Overall, data traffic increased 86 percent year-on-year, while the number of data consumers only increased by 4 percent in the same year. The number of customers with smart devices increased by almost 10 percent. Evidently not only are more people using smartphones, but each person is also using significantly more data than before.
“The number of 4G devices on our network increased 28.8% to 14.2 million, while the average usage per smart device increased 64% to 2.2GB/month,” Vodacom said. “Despite the tough economic backdrop, we added customers in the contract segment, to grow 2% to 6.1 million. The segment’s additions were driven by Vodacom Business customers, which were up 14.8%. Overall contract Arpu (average revenue per user) increased 0.3% and 2.8% quarter on quarter.”
Another focus area for the company has been their roll-out of its fibre business. It more than doubled the amount of homes on its fibre network in the same six-month period.
All this growth means that the company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) grew by nearly 10% year-on-year. It also increased capital expenditure by more than 5 percent for the period, surpassing the R5 billion mark.
How did your data usage change over the lockdown period? Are you back down to your pre-lockdown level of usage or have you persisted with higher usage? Let us know in the comments below.
