MTN’s Cell C number range cut-off costs service providers
MTN has recently cut off the 08419 Cell C number range, making it impossible for their subscribers to reach these Cell C numbers. This decision had a significant impact on service providers using this number range to provide services.
The 08419 number range is currently used for value added Cell C services, which include international call-through services. With an international call-through service, a user dials a number, types their number into an IVR, and is then connected to an international number “for the price of a local call”.
Cell C is however not offering the international call-through service itself. Cell C signed up value added service (VAS) providers and allocated one or more numbers in the 08419 range to these providers.
Unsurprisingly many of these service providers have reported significant losses after this decision by MTN.
Clive Engelberg from Phone IT, a service provider which provides international calling using the 08419 number range, says that while the impact on them was not too high, a few other players have lost as much as 40% of their minutes.
Christopher Geerdts, CEO of XConnect, which provides wholesale international termination for local operators, says that they have seen an immediate slump in revenue after MTN cut off the 08419 number range.
“We saw [an approximate] 15% drop in our total international business revenue overnight, and it has since picked up about 5% again,” said Geerdts.
“The actual providers in the business would have lost at least 30% of income. Since the services are used almost exclusively from mobile phones, the drop in calls reflects the MTN market share.”
“We have lost about one-third of our call traffic and therefore one-third of our revenue that was originating from MTN,” says Michael Toop from the service provider Callall.
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