Customer exodus slows at Vodafone Australia

Vodafone Hutchison Australia continued to lose customers in the last quarter of 2013, but lost fewer of them compared to previous quarters.

The global Vodafone Group reported a loss of 11,000 customers in Australia in the fourth quarter. Because VHA is a 50-50 joint venture between Vodafone and Hutchison, the actual customer loss across the company for the quarter is about double that number—22,000.

While no company wants to lose customers, the loss of 22,000 customers marks a vast improvement from the third quarter when Vodafone haemorrhaged 584,000 customers.

Also, the loss is not a surprise, as Vodafone CEO Bill Morrow had predicted before that the company would continue to lose customers through the rest of 2013. He had said to expect neutral or positive customer growth starting in calendar year 2014.

VHA ended 2013 with slightly more than 5 million customers, based on the numbers reported by the Vodafone Group.

Vodafone Group gave a mostly positive review of the Australian results in its earnings report.

“Our joint venture in Australia experienced a service revenue decline of 8.0 [per cent], similar to the last two quarters,” it said.

“The turnaround remains on track, with improved levels of network performance, net promoter scores and customer base management.”

Vodafone recently announced that its Romanian business’s CEO Inaki Berroeta will take over as the company’s Australian CEO. Morrow will leave the company at the end of March to become the new CEO of NBN Co.

Adam Bender covers telco and enterprise tech issues for Computerworld and is the author of a dystopian novel about surveillance. Follow him on Twitter: @WatchAdam

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