Vodacom Business, an enterprise division of Vodafone-owned Vodacom Group, informed investors on Wednesday that its machine-to-machine (M2M) customers increased 29.6% to 2.2 million in the third quarter to end-December 2015, as the company continues to extend its M2M’s solutions. By Gugu Lourie
M2M services are also referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) – a concept of connecting devices to the internet ranging from refrigerators, geysers and smart electricity meters to coffee makers – in such a way that they communicate without the need of human intervention.
Vodacom Business said its fixed-line and business managed services revenue now consist 12.7% of its total service revenue as the company demonstrate strong commercial momentum in both the mobile and fixed businesses.
Vodacom Business, which operates in various African countries, attributed the growth to new customer wins for IPVN connectivity solutions as well growing demand for cloud and hosting services.
Vodacom Business wants to leverage its parent company Vodafone’s infrastructure and that of its stand-alone subsidiary XLink Communications – a provider of wireless data M2M services.
Furthermore, Vodacom Business is placing M2M services expansion at the heart of plans to grow its market share in the continent.
Vodacom Business Africa provides total communications – including virtual private networks, converged mobile and fixed line access as well as cloud services – to enterprises across the continent. The enterprises include Aveng, Barclays, DHL, Ecobank, FirstRand, Naspers, Sasol and Thomson Reuters.
Vodacom Business Africa competes for enterprise customers with Africa’s largest mobile phone operator MTN and French telecoms group Orange in the rest of Africa.
Vuyani Jarana, CEO of Vodacom Business, recently toldTechFinancials.co.za that Vodacom Business Africa was adopting a demand-led pan-African expansion strategy. It was implementing services such as M2M and cloud, where the demands arise.
Jarana said that the company has built out capability to accelerate M2M in Tanzania, the DRC, Mozambique, Lesotho, Nigeria and Zambia, leveraging the Vodafone Global Data Service Platform.
