As telecommunications giant MTN continued to operate in a “tough” environment, with persistent price competition and regulatory challenges in key markets, the group achieved a marginal quarter-on-quarter rise in subscribers throughout its markets in Africa.
During the three months to March, MTN recorded growth of 1.1% to 210.1-million subscribers, compared with the preceding three months to December.
“This was mainly due to the ban on the sale of sim cards in Nigeria during March, the disconnection of nonrevenue generating subscribers in South Africa and slower subscriber growth in Iran,” explained MTN Group president and CEO Sifiso Dabengwa.
MTN South Africa reported a 3.2% fall to 24.9-million subscribers after shedding 973 064 nonrevenue-generating subscribers.
The group also continued to focus on “regaining relevance” in the prepaid segment and maintaining its postpaid market share.
Despite the postpaid segment delivering a “satisfactory performance” with a 3.7% hike in subscribers to 5.2-million, the prepaid segment remained challenging, registering a 4.9% decrease in subscribers to 19.7-million.
However, the company was confident that the introduction of MTN Sky, an unlimited prepaid bundled price plan, and the launch of a new prepaid voice promotion of 79c a minute for both on-net and off-net calls during the second quarter, would deliver improved subscriber performance in future.
While voice remained under pressure, group data revenues, increasing 43.3% year-on-year, bolstered performance during the quarter.
“Data and Mobile Money remain key areas of focus for the group as traditional voice revenue remains under pressure. We note encouraging growth in data revenues ,increasing 43.3% year-on-year and contributing 17% of total revenue and a 12% increase in Mobile Money subscribers,” Dabengwa commented.
In South Africa – where blended average revenue per user experienced an 11.3% decline to R100.47 during the March quarter – data revenue – recording a 13.3% growth year-on-year with 14.5-million users – also boosted revenue growth, contributing 22.8% of the operation’s revenue.