Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) chief executive Nigel Dews says the problems that plagued telco’s mobile network and caused a sharp slide in customer numbers have been fixed.
Mr Dews said the company’s focus on network and service improvements had a positive effect on customers.
“Operationally, we have turned the corner,” Mr Dews said.
“I’m very confident that what we are doing and the way we are doing it is a lot better than it was.”
VHA, Australia’s third-largest mobile operator, reported a loss of 375,000 customers in the six months to June 30 as users headed out the door in response poor mobile reception and customer service.
Of the total decline, VHA said 347,000 came from its prepaid and mobile broadband customers as well as users of other mobile companies that ran on the VHA network known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators.
This included a series of one-off adjustments due to reporting changes, which contributed 78,000 to the net decline in prepaid customers.
VHA’s post-paid customers fell by 28,000, which was due to a one-off reduction of 32,000 because of reporting changes.
Mr Dews said the company was still losing customers overall, although some products were posting net subscriber additions.
VHA said it expected profitability to improve in the second half but was still forecasting a full-year loss for calendar 2011.
The telco is a 50:50 joint venture between Hutchison Telecommunications Australia (HTA) and Vodafone Group Plc.
It operates the Vodafone and “3” mobile brands in Australia.
The figures were contained in HTA’s first half accounts for calendar 2011, released on Tuesday.
VHA said it had 7.2 million customers at June 30.
Thousands of Vodafone customers voiced their complaints about dropped calls, poor reception and slow data transfers at the end of last year.
This followed Vodafone’s launch of new unlimited mobile plans in a bid to boost customer numbers.
HTA chairman Canning Fok said the company had accelerated investment in its network.
“VHA has moved quickly to fix the network issues and improve its customer service performance and we are confident that this will support VHA’s return to profitable growth,” Mr Fok said.
HTA closed up 0.1 cents at 6.9 cents.
