Vodafone sheds 30K more customers
Vodafone Hutchison Australia's (VHA) joint owner Vodafone has revealed that the troubled telco has continued to shed customers, reporting a loss of 30,000 mobile customers between October and December last year.
Vodafone revenue growth compared.
(Screenshot by Josh Taylor/ZDNet Australia)
In quarterly results released last night, Vodafone revealed that its Australian business had lost 30,000 customers between October and 31 December 2011, bringing the total customer base to 3,362,000.
The company blamed an 11.1 per cent service-revenue decline in the quarter on "network and customer-service difficulties".
"Despite improvements in the network and customer service in Australia, customer sentiment and a highly competitive market continued to adversely impact service-revenue growth, which declined 11.1 per cent in the quarter," Vodafone said.
VHA is the worst performing of all international Vodafone businesses, according to the report, beating out Egypt, which had a revenue decline of 1.5 per cent amid political turmoil following the ousting of former dictator Hosni Mubarak, and the accompanying economic instability that went along with it.
Vodafone is 12 months into an 18-month overhaul of its legacy network equipment. The company has launched an aggressive advertising campaign and has cut prices on mobile-phone plans in order to woo back customers. A Commonwealth Bank analyst report last month predicted that the tide has begun to turn for Vodafone; however, the company has yet to add any net customers since the infamous network issues, and at last reporting had shed 375,000 mobile customers.
While we won't know the extent of the churn of customers from Vodafone until its other joint owner Hutchison releases its full-year report later this year, Telstra has undoubtedly picked up a significant portion of Vodafone's customers, adding a total of 338,000 post-paid mobile customers in the last six months to 31 December 2011, amid growing complaints about its network.
Optus is due to report its third-quarter results on Monday.