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our investment in undersea cable capacity, this infrastructure gives
us the capability to deliver cloud services at scale across Africa,
enabling multinationals to build a single ERP delivered into multiple
geographies. The quality of our transport network is such that the
latency between Lagos and Cape Town is the same as that between
Cape Town and Johannesburg. This is significant, given that
applications are sensitive to the latency of transmission networks.
We recognise that most customers still have their own data centre
infrastructure that they may want to continue to utilise, while taking
additional workloads to our cloud and hosting infrastructure.
Through our 51% shareholding in Stortech, a Cisco Gold partner
that specializes in the management of private data centres, we are
able to give our customers the benefit of both environments.
We are focused on partnering with our clients to deliver innovative
solutions in key industry verticals. Through our product and services
innovations we are expanding the role of ICT beyond that of an
enabler for economic development to become a significant part of
industry value chains. We are integrating key value chains such as
education, healthcare and agriculture, unlocking value for all
stakeholders in the ecosystem. In agriculture, for example, we are
linking smallholder farmers to large retail off-takers and agricultural
input providers, enabling access to markets and creating a
value-based ecosystem.
Our enterprise mobility management and security solutions are
changing the notion of work, from being ‘where people go’ to
‘what people do, anywhere, anytime, through any device’. We advise
our clients on mobility policy management, assisting them to gain
greater productivity and achieve better employee engagement.
Enterprise mobility will be a significant contributor to growth in
mobile data and in value-added services. We have continued to
invest in network security, data security and mobile device security
capabilities to enable us to host applications for enterprise
customers in a scalable and secure environment.
In South Africa, we also see significant growth opportunities in the
SME sector. Most SMEs remain underserved in terms of high-speed
broadband, with fixed-line services at under 7% penetration.
To meet this need we have launched a suite of smart broadband
access products; these include broadband connectivity through
LTE/4G, wireless and fibre. We have been developing various new
propositions to address the specific needs of the SME segment.
Our product strategy for SMEs is based on segmented propositions,
geared at enabling SMEs to be confidently connected, achieve
greater productivity gains and grow their businesses by enabling
access to markets. One such proposition is the Vodacom Hospitality
Solution (powered by Nightsbridge), which aims to connect bed and
breakfast customers with global booking engines to increase
occupancy rates. To achieve further success in this segment, we will
continue to strengthen our indirect channel and dramatically
reduce our mean time to fulfil SME customer orders.
Despite the challenging business context in most African countries
– characterised by slow economic growth, low commodity prices
and weaker local currencies – multinational corporations and global
enterprises continue to look for quality ICT multi-country services
across the continent. Vodacom Business is serving this market
segment consistently, with our pan African IP-VPN footprint
covering 30 countries through direct points of presence. This has
contributed to the 16.6% year-on-year growth in service revenue
by Vodacom Business Africa. Integration with the Vodafone Global
Enterprise Unit has enabled Vodacom Business to achieve greater
success by better serving the multinational segment.
Grow International
Our International operations continue to increase their contribution
to the Group. At year end, we had 27.1 million customers from our
operations outside South Africa, representing 44.2% of the Group’s
total active customers. International service revenue contributed
26.6% to Group service revenue, up from 24.6% last year, while the
contribution of data revenue to service revenue increased from
19.9% to 22.6%. The growth in data has been fuelled by our
R4.1 billion investment in network infrastructure across the
International operations, coupled with our strong focus on boosting
customer experience. Strict regulatory requirements relating to
subscriber registration in most of the regions have impacted
negatively on levels of customer growth. We have processes in
place to ensure full compliance with these requirements. We are
looking to secure further customer growth through our strong focus
on customised product offerings and by enhancing the customer
experience through our CARE initiative.
Given the current low levels of data penetration in the region, our
rapidly expanding 3G coverage, and a large and growing youth
population that is becoming increasingly urbanised, we see exciting
growth potential. With only 34.0% of customers currently using
M-Pesa there are substantial opportunities to increase M-Pesa
penetration across the region, along with other financial and related
services. In Tanzania, where we have achieved scale in the number
of M-Pesa users, we are exploring opportunities to grow our more
sophisticated financial services products such as M-Pawa and
IMT services. We will also be seeking to realise the significant
opportunities associated with driving our Enterprise activities
further across our International operations.
Page 50
International operational review
m-pawa
Kuweka
akiba,piga
*150*00 #
M-Pawa.
Fikiamalengo.
Habanahabahujazakibubu.
WekaakibanaM-Pawa
Vodacom
Kazinikwako
Our performance
Our business
Governance review
Administration
Overview
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