{"id":101926,"date":"2015-10-22T13:11:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T11:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=101926"},"modified":"2015-10-22T13:24:30","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T11:24:30","slug":"mtn-grows-its-customer-base-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/101926\/mtn-grows-its-customer-base-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN grows its customer base in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN Group says its South African operation continues to gain momentum, increasing its subscriber base by 2% to 29.1 million for the period ended September 2015.<\/p>\n

This, it said, was mainly as a result of a 3.1% increase in the pre-paid subscriber base, supported by the continued success of attractive below-the-line campaigns.<\/p>\n

The post-paid subscriber base however, recorded a 2.6% decline to 5.2 million due to the disconnections of approximately 90,000 low-cost router SIMs recorded on the Autopage subscriber base and low availability of handsets.<\/p>\n

“While supply chain issues have been largely resolved, the operation continued to experience limited availability of handsets during the quarter as a result of delayed deliveries,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

Data revenue increased 40% and now contributes 31.5% to total revenue. This was driven by attractive segmented data bundles and an increased uptake of digital services, the operator said.<\/p>\n

The company added 1,746 largely co-located 3G and 811 LTE sites during the quarter.<\/p>\n

Average revenue per user (ARPU) increased 8.8% for the quarter, to R96,21 in SA, MTN said.<\/p>\n

\"MTN<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/th>\n1Q14<\/th>\n2Q14<\/th>\n3Q14<\/th>\n4Q14<\/th>\n1Q15<\/th>\n2Q15<\/th>\n3Q15<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
South Africa<\/td>\n24 875<\/td>\n25 269<\/td>\n26 701<\/td>\n27 993<\/td>\n27 958<\/td>\n28 504<\/td>\n29 077<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Post-paid<\/td>\n5 192<\/td>\n5 458<\/td>\n5 477<\/td>\n5 419<\/td>\n5 402<\/td>\n5 328<\/td>\n5 190<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Pre-paid<\/td>\n19 683<\/td>\n19 811<\/td>\n21 224<\/td>\n22 574<\/td>\n22 555<\/td>\n23 176<\/td>\n23 888<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

MTN connects approximately 233 million people in 22 countries across Africa and the
\nMiddle East.<\/p>\n

Read: MTN threatens to pull out of South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Group president and CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa said: \u201cThe group\u2019s third quarter results reflect continued progress made in the South African operation strengthening its market position and significant improvements in network quality following corrective measures taken in MTN Nigeria.<\/p>\n

“Mobile Money and digital content revenues continued to gain healthy traction, steadily increasing their contribution to revenue,” he said.<\/p>\n

Registered Mobile Money subscribers advanced 12.7% QoQ to 36.5 million, across 14 operations.<\/p>\n

“Aggressive price competition, weakening macroeconomic conditions in most of our markets and unfavourable exchange rate movements continued to impact financial performance for the quarter,” Dabengwa said.<\/p>\n

MTN Nigeria recorded a marginal decline in its subscriber base to 62.5 million subscribers. This, MTN said, was mainly as a result of the disconnection of 5.1 million subscribers at the end of August 2015 in line with industry-wide regulatory registration requirements.<\/p>\n

To date, 3.4 million of these subscribers have been reconnected. “While management continues to engage with the regulator, performance continues to be impacted by ongoing regulatory restrictions,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

MTN eyes sharing cell tower infrastructure<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN wants to show you it really cares<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN disappointed by Telkom deal fall through<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN Group said its South African operation continued to gain momentum, increasing its subscriber base by 2% for the period ended September 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":70617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,28],"class_list":["post-101926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-mtn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101926"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101942,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101926\/revisions\/101942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}