{"id":48785,"date":"2013-11-04T23:14:49","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T21:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=48785"},"modified":"2013-11-05T09:35:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T07:35:00","slug":"data-revenue-mtn-vs-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/48785\/data-revenue-mtn-vs-vodacom\/","title":{"rendered":"Data revenue: MTN vs Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s mobile operators are increasingly talking up the importance of data demand as the future revenue\u00a0driver amid declining voice.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

BusinessTech compares the data revenue and prospects of South Africa’s two largest operators, Vodacom<\/a> and MTN<\/a> relating mostly to their business in South Africa.<\/p>\n

MTN<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a quarterly update for the period ended September 2013, MTN Group President and CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa<\/a> said of the group: “Data and mobile money remain a key focus for the group with traditional voice revenue under pressure.”<\/p>\n

In South Africa, MTN said that data remains the largest contributor to revenue growth\u00a0with an increase of 16.6% (YoY). Data users increased to 13.9\u00a0million in the reporting period out of a total subscriber base of\u00a025.2 million.<\/p>\n

In its results for the year ended 2012, reported in March, MTN said that\u00a0data traffic on its\u00a0network was 65.9% higher at 30,521 TB, with South Africa the main driver of data revenue, contributing\u00a043.9% of the total.<\/p>\n

Data revenue\u00a0increased by 37.6% to R6.4 billion and contributed 15.5% to total revenue (excluding SMS).<\/p>\n

Data revenue was\u00a0boosted by the increase in data users to 13.4 million from 10.9 million, and 5.5 million smartphones on the network.<\/p>\n

Data revenue in South Africa 2006-2013 (ZAR billions)<\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Year<\/strong><\/td>\nVodacom<\/strong><\/td>\nMTN<\/strong><\/td>\nTelkom (ADSL)<\/strong><\/td>\nTelkom Mobile<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2006<\/td>\n2.038<\/td>\n1.938<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2007<\/td>\n3.342<\/td>\n2.756<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n4.67<\/td>\n2.69<\/td>\n8.308<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2009<\/td>\n5.973<\/td>\n2.475<\/td>\n9.31<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2010<\/td>\n4.614<\/td>\n3.638<\/td>\n9.969<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2011<\/td>\n6.18<\/td>\n4.646<\/td>\n10.699*<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2012<\/td>\n7.639<\/td>\n6.4<\/td>\n10.237*<\/td>\n0.163<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2013<\/td>\n8.882<\/td>\n–<\/td>\n10.801*<\/td>\n0.364<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Figures taken from annual reports | *Including Mobile Data revenue<\/small><\/p>\n

Vodacom<\/strong><\/p>\n

In reporting results for the year ended March 2013, in May,\u00a0Vodacom Group<\/a>\u00a0CEO,\u00a0Shameel Joosub<\/a>\u00a0said he expects data revenue to account for up to 30% of total revenue within the next three years, driven by the operator\u2019s South African operations.<\/p>\n

For Vodacom of late, its been a story of\u00a0higher penetration of smartphones and increased mobile internet usage.<\/p>\n

Data revenue in its annual results for SA increased 16.3% to R8.88 billion, contributing 18.4% to service revenue compared to 15.8% in the prior year.<\/p>\n

Fourth quarter data revenue growth was above 20%, while the\u00a0total number of smartphones on its network improved to 6.0 million and average monthly usage increased\u00a043.4% to 139MB.<\/p>\n

Vodacom reported 14.4 million active data customers, up 18.1%, and out of a total active base of \u00a030.3 million subscribers.<\/p>\n

And in results for the quarter ended June 2013, Vodacom noted that data revenue in South Africa increased 21.8%,\u00a0accounting for 21.3% of service revenue, up from 17.5% before.<\/p>\n

At 30 June 2013, Vodacom noted that its active data customers totaled 14.4 million, up 16.5% from the prior year.<\/p>\n

\"SA<\/a>

SA Data revenue<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/h3>\n

Telkom Mobile and Cell C<\/h3>\n

In results for the year ended March 2013, Telkom reported a 123.3% rise in mobile data revenue to R364 million.\u00a0Telkom Mobile<\/a>‘s share of all mobile operators’ year on year data revenue growth was 8.6%.<\/p>\n

Cell C<\/a> is not obliged to provide its financial results, however,\u00a0CEO,\u00a0Alan Knott-Craig<\/a>\u00a0has said that\u00a0the company\u00a0has doubled the traffic on its network over the last 12 months. “When you come to the data traffic, I think its quadrupled,\u201d the CEO has said previously.<\/p>\n

More on SA operators<\/h3>\n

Telkom earnings sink<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom expects data growth spurt<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Reason for concern at MTN?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SA mobile operators are pressing on the importance of data demand as the future driver of revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":36476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,28,3403,1890,65,1075,27,2574],"class_list":["post-48785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-sifiso-dabengwa","tag-telkom","tag-telkom-mobile","tag-vodacom","tag-vodacom-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48785","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=48785"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48930,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48785\/revisions\/48930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}