{"id":39653,"date":"2013-06-09T07:54:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T05:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=39653"},"modified":"2013-06-10T09:01:06","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T07:01:06","slug":"virgin-mobile-ceo-slates-vodacom-mtn-for-anticompetitive-behaviour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/39653\/virgin-mobile-ceo-slates-vodacom-mtn-for-anticompetitive-behaviour\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Mobile CEO slates Vodacom, MTN for anticompetitive behaviour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Virgin Mobile South Africa\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/4694-Virgin-Mobile-South-Africa\">Virgin Mobile South Africa<\/a> CEO, <a title=\"Jonathan Marchbank\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/4695-Jonathan-Marchbank\">Jonathan Marchbank<\/a> has blamed <a title=\"Vodacom\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1639-Vodacom\">Vodacom<\/a> and <a title=\"MTN\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1640-MTN-Group\">MTN<\/a> and their \u201cunregulated, anticompetitive behaviour\u201d for making it tough for smaller players to enter the market. This is according to a report in the Sunday Times.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report Virgin Mobile SA, with only 500,000 customers, is finding it challenging to enter the retail market.<\/p>\n<p>Retailers, said Marchbank, are reluctant to offer Virgin Mobile products to customers because they will lose \u2018trailing revenue\u2019 from existing partnerships with Vodacom and MTN.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report Marchbank said that he has given up trying to compete against Vodacom and MTN, and is rather trying to build a loyal Virgin Mobile brand following.<\/p>\n<p>Marchbank was announced as Virgin Mobile SA CEO in August 2012. This followed stints as the head of Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa Group\u2019s activities in Asia, and Chief Operating Officer for Virgin Mobile USA.<\/p>\n<p>His appointments followed a significant investment into Virgin Mobile South Africa, with Marchbank being tasked with accelerating the growth of the company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will spend the remainder of the year leading the planning and execution of our new go-to-market strategy, a process that is already well underway,\u201d Marchbank said at the time of his appointment.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More about Virgin mobile<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"New Virgin Mobile SA CEO named\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/57473-new-virgin-mobile-sa-ceo-named.html\"><strong>New Virgin Mobile SA CEO named<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Virgin Mobile SA to close 30 of 38 stores\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/19142\/virgin-mobile-sa-to-close-30-of-38-stores\/\"><strong>Virgin Mobile SA to close 30 of 38 stores<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Virgin Mobile SA to reduce store footprint\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/19106\/virgin-mobile-sa-to-reduce-store-footprint\/\"><strong>Virgin Mobile SA to reduce store footprint<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virgin Mobile SA CEO blames Vodacom and MTN\u2019s \u201cunregulated, anticompetitive behaviour\u201d for lack of retail opportunities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,3873,28,77,27],"class_list":["post-39653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-jonathan-marchbank","tag-mtn","tag-virgin-mobile","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39656,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39653\/revisions\/39656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}