More than 8 million people participated in the free mobile data promotion offered yesterday by South Africa’s leading mobile operator Vodacom, setting a new network throughput record.
Vodacom offered customers 1 Gigabyte (GB) of free mobile data to be used on May 11, as part of the operator’s twentieth birthday celebrations taking place throughout the year.
The operator said 8 million people took advantage of the promotion, with data transfer speeds peaking at 29 Gigabits per second – 20 per cent higher than previously recorded – while mobile data traffic in some high-demand areas was up to 150 per cent higher than usual levels.
While some customers complained of limited network availability and slower service as a result of higher network usage during the promotion, Vodacom said it is important to take the “occasional risk” when trying to put forward innovative new offerings.
“We’d obviously prefer it if 100 per cent of our customer base was happy with the service yesterday, but the essence of innovation is trying out new ideas and taking the occasional risk,” a Vodacom spokesperson told HumanIPO.
“This campaign wasn’t only aimed at the tech-savvy customers in the suburbs but all customer groups across the country, and from that point of view it did make a real difference and help to bridge the digital divide.”
Vodacom said it will invest heavily this year with a view to further improving network quality and capacity.
“Our focus will continue to be on investing in the network to increase capacity, allowing us to bring prices down without impacting quality. We’ve earmarked around ZAR9 billion (US$867 million) for capital investment in the current financial year, an increase of roughly 30 per cent on last year,” the spokesperson said.
