2degrees announces 875,656 customers

IDC analyst says numbers are indicative of popularity among SMEs in last 6 months

2degrees has announced it has 875,656 customers, an increase of 295,545 on the number of subscribers it claimed in March last year.

Eric Hertz, CEO of 2degrees, says he is “humbled by the speed at which New Zealanders have joined the company.”

He says more than 275,000 customers have ported their existing number to 2degrees, “signalling an end to the days where people were locked to their network by their number.”

Greg Saunders, telecommunications analyst at IDC, says the customer numbers are indicative of 2degree's popularity in New Zealand, especially among small to medium enterprise.

“This shows the continued popularity of 2degrees, clearly their growth strategy has been working quite well,” says Saunders.

"The small business sector is where 2degrees have been particularly active over the last six months, and some of their deals have been very popular for SMEs."

Saunders adds that he expects Telecom and Vodafone to take notice of the customer numbers released by 2degrees, especially the number of accounts ported over to their competitor.

2degrees, which launched in August 2009, employs 545 staff.

According to Vodafone Group results from September 30, Vodafone New Zealand has 2.4 million subscribers.

Telecom told investors in August last year it had 1.2 million connections on its XT network – accounting for 56 percent of the base and 82 percent of cellular revenue.