Vodafone adds 125,000 new subs

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 16 November 2005 08:38

IT Industry - Strategy

Vodafone has outpaced Optus by handsome margin in the three months to 30 September, adding 125,000 net customers (excluding MVNO customers) compared to Optus' 59,000.

and Vodafone's total customer base to 3.3 million of which 3.016 million are direct Vodafone customers. The prepaid customer base increased by 6.4 percent in the quarter and now accounts for 71.9 percent of the overall base.

Vodafone says its capped plans have driven a "significant increase in voice usage" from 1,120m minutes, in the six months to September 04, to 1,818m minutes in the same period to September 05 – an increase of 62 percent. However by their nature capped plans do not increase revenue and can significantly increase costs because Vodafone must pay other carriers for every call terminated on a network other than its own.

The results were reported as part of Vodafone Group's global half year result, in which it noted that capped plans had "adversely impacted interconnect costs and that service revenue has risen by 6.3 percent , "despite a decline in ARPU due to the large number of customers migrating to the new[caped] tariffs".

Prepaid ARPU for the quarter was $31.10 per month, postpaid $93.6 and 'blended' $48.20. The figures a year ago were $32.70, $77.10 and $52.10.