How the Vodafone recovery is helping Australian users get a better deal

60-second Intro

Vodafone as reported has markedly improved their total year to date net loss, thanks to the increasing popularity of their Red plans and by gaining an additional 135,000 subscribers. Read on to learn more and how your next prepaid plan with Vodafone could save you money.

  • Vodafone Australia has in recent years had a bad track record when it comes to customer service and providing modern levels of network connectivity.
  • The findings released in the report out this week, show that Vodafone has made a marked improvement in the level of support provided to their subscribers.
  • While Vodafone Australia has reported a net loss of revenue, it is still a marked improvement when compared directly to the same time period in the previous financial year.

Year to date revenue & statistics reported

Vodafone Australia has recently reported that for the current financial year, first quarter 2016, they have recorded a net loss of $376 million.

This is a marked improvement of $228 million, in comparison to the staggering $604 million loss which they incurred in the first six months of 2015.

Vodafone Australia, the third national carrier reported a total revenue of $3.652 billion, which is said to be a 4.5 percent increase, year on year from last years lower figures.

Overall earnings calculated before tax, depreciation and interest was AU$812.8 million, an amazing 5.4 percentage points increase again in comparison to the first financial half of last year.

The net average revenue generated by Vodafone Australia on a per subscriber count was $45.68, a slight decrease of $0.32 from last year’s AU$46 per recorded subscriber.

The good news for Vodafone though, is that this figure takes into account handset repayments on postpaid plans, which in comparison to the same time period last year is up 3.1 percentage points, rising from $50.79 to $52.38.

Vodafone Australia postpaid subscribers totalled 3.3 million while their prepaid users were 1.73 million. MVNO subscribers using the Vodafone network accounted for 458,000 subscribers.

Increase in customers gained

Vodafone Australia subscribers as mentioned above grew over the six month period, accounting for an increase of 135,000 new customers using Vodafone as their network provider of choice.

CFO James Marsh was quoted as attributing the improvements to recorded revenue, thanks to their postpaid subscriber base and the increasing market popularity of their Red plans.

“VHA has invested heavily in its network, customer service, and products in recent years, and our strategy is proving successful. Our Red plans offer generous inclusions, which, coupled with our strong 4G network, are supporting customers’ growing data usage, which increased 84 percent in 2015 on the previous year.” – CFO, James Marsh.

Research company Kantar revealed last week that Vodafone Australia has a current market share of total 14.8 percent, a year on year drop of two percent.

In the postpaid subscription market, Vodafone Australia fell by three percent down to only 15.3 percent of the total market. And for the prepaid sector Vodafone managed to retain their 12 percent share of the market.

Customer service improvements

Vodafone Australia was keen to indicate in the recent report that their recorded customer complaints was down, with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman reporting a 66.7 percent drop in the number of complaints seen.

This accounts for a year on year decrease from 10.5 complaints per 10,000 subscribers, to the current low amount of only 3.5 per the same amount of users.

“We also recorded a strong increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS), up 10 points year on year in December 2015 and reaching positive territory for the first time in five years in September 2015.” – CFO, James Marsh.

In an effort to gain more subscribers over their direct competitors Telstra and Optus, Vodafone Australia announced earlier this month that it would remove it’s daily roaming fee for all subscribers which travel to New Zealand for business or tourism, for at least the next 12 months.

This will allow all existing and new customers to make calls and texts as per usual, as if they were still in Australia, while on travelling around New Zealand.

Partnerships and the future

Late last year in December, Vodafone Australia released news of a new partnership with the National Farmers Federation, with the goal of helping to develop an online platform for farmers.

This platform would allow modern farmers to use digital technology to transform the existing state of the Australian agriculture industry.

With the future of IoT and M2M (machine-to-machine) technologies being developed, a future reliance on them makes sense as an answer for modernising rural farmers.

In Conclusion

While Vodafone Australia might be improving their customer service and rural connectivity, they still have a long way to go when it comes to providing a similar high level of service which subscribers can get from both Telstra and Optus.

The mobile phone plan market is highly competitive these days thanks to the entry of low cost MVNOs such as OVO Mobile, Amaysim and Boost Mobile.

Vodafone might be Australia’s third largest network and are constantly upgrading their network to improve their 4G network connectivity, but they still have a long way to go.

If you must be on the Vodafone Australia network you will be much better off not going direct.

By signing up with an MVNO such as Lebara, as a customer you will be looked after, if you have an issue and need to contact customer support.