Vodafone NZ loses 50K customers in second quarter

Vodafone New Zealand's customer count fell a net 50,000 to 2.32 million during the company's second quarter, according to figures released by its UK parent.

The carrier still holds a big lead over rivals Telecom and 2degrees, but its total mobile connections have now slipped 100,000 over the past 12 months.

The latest standings:

TOTAL ACTIVE MOBILE CONNECTIONS*

Vodafone: 2.32 million (46.96%)
Telecom:  1.57 million (31.78%)
2degrees: 1 million (20.24%)
TelstraClear/MVNOs: 50,000 (1.01%)

Telecom recently reported a mobile "reset" as it closed down its old CDMA network. Many CDMA customers were revealed as inactive, or had strayed to Vodafone or 2degrees rather tan upgraded to XT.

2degrees recently said it had hit the 1 million customer milestone, with 100,000 customers on contract. 

It its latest quarter, Vodafone's percentage of customers on pre-pay (around 70% when 2degrees launched) continued to edge down, falling to 66.2%. The carrier spins this as a good thing. Contract customers pay more per month than those on prepay.

Vodafone does not include its wholesale deal with TestraClear (which sells a rebadged version of Vodafone's service) in its connection numbers. 

Vodafone bought TelstraClear this quarter, bringing its mobile customers directly into the fold.

The company says it will operate Vodafone and TelstraClear as separate brands for another five or six months. It will phase out TelstraClear branding altogether in about 18 months.

Vodafone PLC does not break out quarterly financial results for its New Zealand subsidiary.

Vodafone NZ recently files full-year result for the year to March 31, 2012 with the Companies Office. Net profit rose to $175 million from $151.5 million a year ago on revenue fell that fell 4.3% to $1.62 billion.

Vodafone PLC delivered a poor result for the quarter, taking its half-year to £492 million against an £8 billion profit in the year-ago quarter. The company announced a series of multi-billion pound write-downs for subsidiaries hit by the Eurozone financial crisis. However, investors were buoyed by the fact Vodafone is able to keep a high 6% dividend yield thanks to its 45% stake in the strongly performing US carrier Verizon Wireless.

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* Companies count each mobile connection, not each individual customer - so a person with a work cellphone, personal cellphone, tablet and GPS each with their own SIM card would count as four connections, for example. While Telecom and Vodafone, as listed companies, have to release detailed customer numbers, privately-held 2degrees sticks to general numbers. Telecom, Vodafone and 2degrees count mobile connections as those that have been used in the past 90 days.