Vodacom Mozambique, a subsidiary of South African mobile services provider Vodacom, last week reached the 100 000 customer milestone after commencing commercial operations in one of Africa’s most promising economies in December last year.
“Speed has been the name of the game for Vodacom Mozambique. The core network was built in three months, a six-figure customer base reached in six months and now we’re aiming for profitability by this time next year,” said Clive Tarr, managing director of Vodacom Mozambique.
“With almost 20-million people and an impressive GDP [gross domestic product] growth rate, Mozambique is a midsized country with a supersized future. You don’t get many investment destinations as attractive as this,” he added.
Product innovations have been key to Vodacom Mozambique’s success. For example, only Vodacom offers Mozambicans prepaid cellular services with no airtime window, prepaid roaming to South Africa and free “Please Call Me” messages, and only Vodacom doesn’t charge to change between per-minute and per-second billing on a prepaid contract.
In addition, Vodacom is the only network in Mozambique to offer bundled minutes with contract packages and a unique prepaid-contract hybrid package called Top Up. Vodacom also offers all its Mozambican customers the ability to send SMSes to more than 600 GSM cellular networks worldwide.
Vodacom Mozambique now covers Maputo/Matola, Beira, Nampula/Nacala, Pemba, Vilanculos, Inhambane, the corridors from Maputo to South Africa, Maputo to Swaziland, Maputo to Xai-Xai and Beira to Zimbabwe.
“A focus on the best network quality, most efficient customer care, widest distribution and most innovative value-added services should see Vodacom Mozambique achieving market dominance after three years,” concluded Tarr.
Besides Mozambique, Vodacom currently has operations in South Africa, Lesotho, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
South African telecommunications giant Telkom, which has dual listings in New York and Johannesburg, owns 50% of Vodacom. — I-Net Bridge