Vodacom SAF

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Vodacom was awarded a 15 year national license to provide mobile phone services in October 1993. Vodacom was granted its license through an international tender process called in 1993 for the selection of two national mobile operators. The other winning consortium was Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN). The company started its commercial operations in July 1994. Vodacom was owned by the partially privatized Telekom SA (50%), Vodafone of the U.K. (35%), and VenFin of South Africa (15%). By 2005, Telekom SA was approx. 46% private. As part of its concession contract, Vodacom committed itself to the generation of R1 billion of economic activity outside its core business within ten years. Such target was achieved in just three years. Vodacom also committed to rolling-out 22,000 subsidized community telephones in areas of greatest need of telecommunications services before June 1999. The company's mobile cellular telecommunications service license was confirmed and reissued in August 2002 pursuant to the Telecommunications Act, 103 of 1996. On May 7, 1997, Vodacom was issued with a formal written public switched telecommunications services license, a value-added network services license and a radio frequency spectrum license. The company then operated under this new regulatory regime. In December 2004, the company became the first to roll out G3 technology in South Africa. As of 2005, Vodacom was the market leader in South Africa, with 17,500,000 subscribers, representing a 57% market share. Vodacom's South African GSM network consisted of nearly 6400 base stations and covered more than 6% of the total landmass of South Africa and 97.1% of the population. Capex 2013: Wireless Intelligence