Vodacom

We have a long history of innovation in Vodacom, which has created the space for us to consistently adapt and drive differentiation to ensure market leadership. The ability for us to keep abreast of the ever-changing landscape, coupled with the capability to execute on our plans designed to deal with the changes, gives us the edge we seek to maintain. We have made it clear that our purpose is to ensure we empower the digital lives of our customers. This purpose encapsulates our vision of being a leading digital company that empowers a connected society.

The successful execution of this vision will allow for Vodacom to continue to lead in technology while developing propositions and services that ensure continued relevance to our customers. This will be underpinned by a deep understanding of our customers, implementing class-leading technology on our network, while developing and attracting new skills required to drive Vodacom forward. Central to our strategy will be our customer experience, where we constantly seek to reduce friction and exceed expectations.

Our pricing transformation programme will continue, as we seek to ensure our services are affordable to our customers. We have made significant progress on reducing the price of voice and data to our customers over the last year, and will continue to do so.

The proposed White Paper, which sets out the intention of a Wireless Open Access Network (WOAN), will of course have wide-ranging implications for the telecommunications industry in South Africa. We are working closely with all industry stakeholders to find a workable solution that will ensure that the telecommunications sector can continue to be the catalyst for economic transformation and development in the country.

While we aim to retain our position as the leading telecommunications operator in the markets we operate in, there are some material elements of our business model that will require change. We are aggressively growing beyond traditional telco revenues to focus on growing digital and ICT products and services in both the consumer and enterprise segments.

Our drive to become a leading digital company will require of us to accelerate the use of partnerships to help design, create and deliver compelling products and offerings to our customers. Another enabler is further development of open technologies, allowing for rapid integration into our systems, particularly for partners and other third parties that we need to collaborate with. Our investment in infrastructure and enabling systems continues, as this will allow us to increase our ability to be agile and flexible.

From a customer perspective, our segmented approach will evolve from traditional segmentation and Customer Value Management, to a more comprehensive big data led approach that will allow us to be much more granular in understanding customers and using deep insights to design and deliver propositions that speak to individual customer behaviours and needs. Our CARE programme supports this by driving consistent excellence in customer experience across all touch-points.

Our strategy applies to all International markets in the Vodacom Group, albeit with some customisation to account for variations across our markets.

The long-term future is an exciting one for Vodacom. We see our role as empowering a connected society and we aim to play a leading role in providing access and services in a more connected world. We are, therefore, taking a strong position in some very exciting developments, including fibre, digital services and financial services. We are also moving into a world where the Internet of Things becomes an intrinsic part of the lives of our customers, both consumers and enterprise, and we wish to establish ourselves as a leader in this space. We are particularly excited about the possibilities that this new connected world creates for our customers and indeed society, where Vodacom has a unique opportunity to play a role in revolutionising sectors such as education, health, security and agriculture. While excellence at an infrastructure layer is merely a means to an end, we intend to continue our significant investment in intelligent networks and systems. At the same time, we will focus increasingly on the services layer so that the benefits of these investments can be felt by both our consumer and enterprise customers.