Vodacom: Opportunities and Challenges

Level the Playing Field

Vodacom is a well-established company with an advantage of existing operations, broader network and have all the funds for advertising its campaigns. Due to that, new entrants in the telecommucation industry find it more difficult to gain customers or to be more competitive. The new entrants are also facing certain barriers where old subscribers are resisting to change to other new networks, start-up cost are so high as Vodacom had already established its operations and makes it more difficult for the new entrants to compete. Attracting employees with specialized expertise and experience from Vodacom is also a challenge to the new companies.

Recommendation

Infrastructure sharing could be the best practise to perform in this regard where two or more operators join forces to share the infrastructure that forms a network. Operators gain the opportunity to cut cost and resources resulting in a well-organized allocation of investment. Sharing the network Infrastructure provides a better competitive environment in the telecommunication market where all the telecoms companies will be in the same levels when it comes to the network infrastructure avoiding high start-up costs to the new entrants.

Duplication of networks can be avoided, where same type of infrastructure could be installed in a same area resulting to more capital expenditure and waste of resources. Sharing of towers and equipment transforms into skill sharing between the companies and can reduce the capital and operating expenditure cost.

E-waste

Electronic/electrical products that are unused/faulty become electronic waste (e-waste) and contain toxic materials that can cause health risks, damage to the environmental through land impurity as well as pollution of water and air. Electronic and electrical products also require the removal and handling of valuable raw materials through disposal process.

Vodacom collects and recycle all of their e-waste including their electrical apparatus replaced under the RAN renewal programme, to reduce these impacts. Vodacom motivates and encourage their customers to recycle their mobile phones and accessories by forming of their recycle programme. Vodacom recycle up to 396 tonnes of E-waste per year/annum.

Recommandation:

Vodacom should raise awareness of e-waste impact to every individual around the globe and not only focus on their customers, this can be accomplished by including the e-waste awareness on their sales advertisement on Television and social media. E-waste disposal bins should be available in all areas close to residents and the public/customers should be trained on the disposal procedures.(Cohen et al., 2012) Buying back of the unused/broken cellphones from the customers with a very low price or rewarding them with something could be an inspiration for e-waste disposal and at the same time increasing the customer loyalty.

Transparency on Mobile banking

In 2001, Vodacom and ABSA joined forces in establishing the mobile banking service, where customers had to buy Vodacom sim-cards and open an ABSA bank account in order to access this service. ABSA utilised a high level of encryption technology that is suitable for all banking organisations to ensure secured transaction on the new mobile banking service, where the only possible access is through a secured PIN and the personalised account number combination. For the transaction to take place a customer also need to buy a 32K Simcard from vodashop.

In 2011, Vodacom with ABSA announced a multi-million contract that could speed up the pace of mobile innovation and enlarge the range of mobile and banking services on offer to customers. The innovation includes a machine to machine solution, bundled mobile, financial service offerings and free USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) Banking.

Recommendation

Mobile banking is a very helpful and useful initiative, but there are some concerns due to the increasing number of Frauds or Corruption in cell phone banking, where sim swaps are made without the owners permit and frauders take ownership of the simcard and gain access into the bank account and make unauthorised transactions.

Cell phone service providers and banks don’t take accountability/responsibility when it come to this kind of fraud claiming that this happens due to the customers negligence by compromising their personal details.

Vodacom may require changing the process of using/requesting the customers personal details when performing sim swap. Security measures should be taken into consideration to protect the consumer’s personal details. Vodacom should change the sim swap process by requesting a pin code that is linked to the customer’s details, pin codes/passwords can be changed at any time for security reasons rather than personal details, this will lead to safer cellphone banking, less corruption and it won’t be easy for frauders to do a swim swap and gain access to bank accounts.