[ad_1]
Pick n Pay can Expect some competition from rival Shoprite when it comes to offering mobile voice and data service.
Speaking about the group’s results for the 26 weeks to the end of December, Chief Executive Pieter Engelbrecht said on Tuesday that Africa’s largest retailer plans to operate its own mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO.
He said this move is part of his efforts to make better use of the six petabytes of data he has on his customers. “We will launch our own virtual network very soon to further improve our customer data.”
Engelbrecht did not give a deadline for when that service would be offered or with which network it would partner.
Shoprite’s move to mobile networks follows Pick n Pay announcing in October that it planned to launch Pick n Pay Mobile and that its Boxer chain would launch Boxercom.
At the time, Pick n Pay’s outgoing CEO Richard Brasher said supplying data was a sensible move for the chain given the challenges posed by Covid-19.
Not new
Pick n Pay Mobile was launched using MTN’s mobile network infrastructure, using an MVNO model.
Retailers that offer a mobile service are not new. British giant Tesco has been operating such a network since 2003 and recorded five million subscribers. It operates in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Although Shoprite will emulate other retailers when it comes to being an MVNO, Engelbrecht’s vision is broader. See your group using it in combination with the insights it gets from its 17 million reward members, seven billion products sold annually, and 7.5 million monthly digital visitors.
- This article was originally published on Moneyweb and is used here with permission.
