Telkom has published its financial results for the year ended 31 March 2018, showing impressive growth across its mobile division.

The number of subscribers on Telkom Mobile increased by 30.2% over the past year, with the company now reporting an active mobile subscriber count of 5.2 million.

Post-paid subscribers increased by 20.5% to 1.48 million, while prepaid subscribers grew to 3.7 million – up 34.6% from last year.

Telkom said its blended average revenue per user also increased by 10.2% to R98, and added that its 47.2% growth in mobile service revenue was a significant driver towards its 5.9% increase in revenue across its consumer division.

“Prepaid subscribers increased 34.6% to 3.7 million with the ARPU increasing by 21.4% to R60, benefiting from an expansion of our fixed wireless LTE smart offerings to the prepaid segment,” said the company.

Telkom rolled out 988 integrated sites in its 2018 financial year, bringing its total number of sites to 3,794 – of which 2,333 were upgraded to LTE sites.

Data traffic and FreeMe

Telkom saw an impressive increase in mobile data traffic over the past year, which was a major contributor to mobile revenue.

“Mobile data was a major contributor to revenue with a 56.3% growth, supported by 124% growth in data usage.”

“The re-farming of our 1,800MHz spectrum is paying dividends, with smartphone subscribers increasing by 43.9% to 2.8 million,” added Telkom.

Telkom Mobile’s FreeMe data bundles have been steadily gaining momentum, too, aided by the introduction of bundled LIT services.

“Sales for FreeMe recurring data bundles have steadily increased since the introduction of LIT services on the 2GB and higher services.”

“30% of our post-paid subscribers have adopted the FreeMe product suite as their base plan,” said Telkom.

Telkom Mobile’s broadband total data volumes increased from 85,770TB to 191,813TB, with mobile data revenue increasing 56.3% to R3.7 billion.

The company said its suite of Unlimited, FreeMe, and Smart broadband products would become the main focus of its sales and marketing going forward.