Vodafone’s results for the quarter to 30 September 2005

16 November 2005 

Vodafone New Zealand initiatives launched over the past year to make the cost of calling even more affordable are seeing customers talking on their mobiles like never before. 

Vodafone’s results for the quarter to 30 September 2005, released today, show voice usage minutes at 559 million, compared with 497 million minutes for the same period last year.  

Voice usage minutes reflect the volume of minutes handled on the New Zealand network by domestic and visiting customers.  

Finance Director David Sullivan said today that voice usage minutes - released for the first time in line with Vodafone Group’s new global reporting standards - showed the extent to which New Zealanders were embracing mobile as their preferred way to communicate. 

Mobile connections in New Zealand outnumber landlines nearly two to one, and intense competition is leading to mobile customers benefiting from an ever-expanding range of products, services and value-based deals. 

Over the past seven months alone Vodafone has launched its revolutionary 3G-enabled products and services, free text weekends and the Let Yourself Go calling offer, where customers pay for the first three minutes of a call of up to two hours’ duration. This month it launched You Choose for On Account customers, allowing them for the first time to design a customised plan. 

“We’re committed to making mobile even more affordable for our customers and they are responding by spending more time talking, TXTing and using services like video calling, mobile television and full music track downloads  - it’s as simple as that,” Sullivan says. 

Sullivan said the strong uptake of these initiatives and 3G-enabled products and services launched by Vodafone New Zealand in August was reflected in an improvement in total Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). 

“We have delivered our customers a whole heap of new ways to use their mobiles and the uptake has been fantastic. People are loving the new services and the ability they have to communicate, inform and entertain themselves in a totally different way.” 

Over the quarter ARPU for On Account customers improved to $140 while Prepay was steady at $26, bringing total ARPU to $51 for the quarter.

Over the past quarter Vodafone added a net 27,000 customers to its customer base, which at 30 September stood at 1,956,000.  

Reported net additions were lower than previous quarters due to a one-off adjustment to its customer base. Vodafone’s market share now stands at 54%. 

Sullivan says that in a challenging and very competitive market he was pleased that Vodafone continued to sustain its mobile market leadership and experience growth in customer numbers.  

Growth allowed Vodafone to continue reinvesting in its 3GSM network and delivering leading-edge products to customers along with an unbeatable range of mobile phones that bring the services to life.