{"id":43272,"date":"2013-07-30T14:24:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T12:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=43272"},"modified":"2013-07-31T08:50:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T06:50:15","slug":"cell-c-sign-ups-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/43272\/cell-c-sign-ups-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell C sign-ups boom"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time in the history of Cell C<\/a>, the operator has connected more than one million customers in one month.<\/p>\n

The operator announced on Tuesday (30 July 2013) that it has signed up one million customers in July 2013 \u2013 the first time the operator achieved such strong growth.<\/p>\n

“I am exceptionally proud and excited to announce that for the first time in the history of Cell C we have connected more than one million customers in one month,\u201d said Alan Knott-Craig<\/a>, Cell C CEO.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast night we broke through the million gross connection barrier bringing our total customer base to over 11.7 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig said that while churn is still high, he is encouraged by the steady growth in net additions for the month of July, which as of last night (29 July 2013) totalled over 338 000 connections.<\/p>\n

Cell C is currently the third largest mobile operator behind Vodacom<\/a> with 29.3 million SA subscribers and MTN<\/a> with 25 million. Telkom Mobile<\/a> had 1.5 million subscribers in March 2013.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig told media at the company\u2019s headquarters in Sandton on 17 July, that operators in SA needed a market share of between 20-25% to be profitable.<\/p>\n

Cell C\u00a0is on a three year path to profitability, and follows a recent injection\u00a0an\u00a0injection of around R5.7-billion.<\/p>\n

The cash comes from\u00a0Oger Telecom<\/a>, the Lebanese-controlled firm with an indirect 75% holding in the SA operator,\u00a0which invested a further $350-million (around R3.5 billion) and key lenders \u201cincluding\u00a0Nedbank<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Development Bank of South Africa<\/a>\u201d which provided R2.2 billion.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s third operator\u00a0claimed on 17 July that its subscriber numbers had swelled to 11.5 million, from nine million over the past 18 months, giving the group an approximate 14% market share.<\/p>\n

This compares to rivals Vodacom, which has 29.282 million (June), MTN which has 24.95 million (March), and\u00a0Telkom Mobile\u00a0at 1,54 million customers (March).<\/p>\n

Noting the group\u2019s success over the past 18 months, Knott-Craig said: \u201cwe are hoping to keep this kind of growth growing over the next couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on Cell C<\/h3>\n

Cell C seeks profitability within 3 years<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C: where the billions will go<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Investors knocking on Cell C\u2019s door<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Saudi Telecom takes big hit on Cell C spend<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C talking to MVNO players: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Telkom dismisses Cell C merger talks<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time in the history of Cell C, the operator has connected more than one million customers in one month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23596,"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":[42,26,6396,2687],"class_list":["post-43272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-sign-ups","tag-subscribers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43272","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=43272"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43276,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43272\/revisions\/43276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}