JOHANNESBURG - Cell C bled active data customers in the first six months of this year, despite the company’s claim that its effective price of data per megabyte decreased by more than 28 percent year on year.
The group's total active data subscribers went down 4 percent from 12.6 million to 12.1 million.
However, the mobile operator said its data revenue was up 20 percent, while data traffic went up 62 percent compared to the same period last year. Income from the data accounted for 52 percent of mobile revenue, up from 46 percent in the prior period.
Despite losses in data users, the company added 600 000 new subscribers, taking its subscriber base to the customer to 16.3 million.
Cell C chief executive Dos Santos says he is excited about the roaming agreement with MTN and that it provides its customers with wider 3G and 4G coverage.
“This means that where a customer is on a call that happens to switch from a Cell C tower to an MTN tower, the call will not be dropped. This agreement allows us to now increase our capital investment during the second half in areas where we’ve chosen to build coverage and capacity,” Dos Santos says. “The rollout of this multi-billion-rand long-term roaming agreement has already begun and areas currently benefiting from this deal include Witbank, Middelburg, Secunda, Ermelo, and Standerton.”