Customer Growth For Vodafone Smashes All Records
BERKSHIRE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--January 4, 1999--Vodafone Group Plc today revealed connection figures which showed unprecedented UK growth in the last calendar quarter when a record of over 933,000 new customers joined the UK's most popular mobile telephone service.
Combined with record international growth during the quarter of over 862,000, almost 1.8 million new customers joined Vodafone networks in the period. During 1998, a record of almost four million new customers joined Vodafone networks throughout the world, more than double the number who joined in 1997. Vodafone opens 1999 with a world-wide customer base of over 9.1 million customers - an increase of a remarkable 77 percent during the year - up from the 5.17 million with which it opened 1998.
In the UK, for the October-December quarter, Vodafone connected a record of over 933,000 new customers, including over 755,000 on to it's Pay as You Talk service. The quarterly performance was over three times more than the previous best. At the end of December, the UK customer base was over 4,874,000, up by more than fifty percent during 1998. This included more than 1,175,000 on the Pay as You Talk service, over a million of whom joined during 1998, and over 500,000 of whom joined Vodafone in December alone.
Overseas, in the quarter, Vodafone grew by more than 862,000 new customers and finished the year with a customer base of over 4,259,000, more than doubling during 1998. The quarterly figure included for the first time, over 155,000 customers on the newly acquired business in New Zealand and the newly opened service in Egypt. Underlying growth for the calendar quarter grew by a record 633,000.
Commenting, Chris Gent, chief executive of Vodafone Group Plc, said: ''The astonishing success of prepay services around the world has rapidly accelerated the growth in mobile phone markets and greatly assisted us in achieving a record year for customer growth. The UK market, responding to our strategies of giving better value to all of our customers and expanding distribution to multiple retailers, showed extra-ordinary growth. Already more than 20 percent of the entire population now use a mobile phone. We are seeing similar growth patterns around the world which is why we confidently expect to see market penetration rates of over fifty percent in all of our major markets within the next four years.'' |
