{"id":25575,"date":"2012-10-31T23:15:43","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T21:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=25575"},"modified":"2012-11-01T10:51:49","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T08:51:49","slug":"mtn-zone-numbers-impress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/25575\/mtn-zone-numbers-impress\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN Zone numbers impress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile operator MTN Group<\/a> says its per second billing price plan offering, MTN Zone, has close to 14 million users in South Africa, and still growing.<\/p>\n

MTN Nigeria CEO, Brett Goschen<\/a> revealed the numbers last week (25 October) in a conference call discussing the group\u2019s Q3 trading update.<\/p>\n

MTN Zone offers PayAsYouGo customers discounts of up to 100% on calls and SMSes to MTN numbers and is dependent on the user’s location and time of day.<\/p>\n

MTN Group lifted its subscriber base to 182.7 million for the quarterly period ended September 2012, while its South African subscriber base improved to 24.498 million.<\/p>\n

MTN South Africa is part of MTN Group, a multi-national telecommunications operator that boasts over 152 million subscribers across its companies with operations in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Speaking to an analyst, Goschen said: \u201cWe\u2019re just touching on 14 million customers on MTN Zone out of a total of about 20 million (PayAsYouGo). It is still growing strong. And I\u2019m excluding the hybrid. On the hybrid we\u2019re touching on two million customers now, of which 50% is Zone hybrids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

MTN South Africa reported 20.152 million pre-paid customers and 4.346 million post-paid customers for the Q3 period.<\/p>\n

In Nigeria, the numbers were also impressive. \u201cSo we introduced Zone in July, and at this stage we are nationwide with Zone with about 8 million active subscribers,\u201d Goschen said.
\nMTN Nigeria, is the operator\u2019s largest market by subscribers, with 40.211 million up to the period ended September 2012.<\/p>\n

Also speaking during the teleconference, Karel Pienaar<\/a>, CEO for South Africa, admitted a slowdown in data numbers from what the group announced in August reporting on results for the six months ended June 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the last quarter we did see a slowdown. But we are identifying it more as seasonal, in other words holidays. Like in September we saw quite a dip. If I look at the total \u00a0numbers to date then they\u2019re back to the 40s type of growth numbers relative to October of last year,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So there are seasonal elements, and certainly we\u2019re definitely seeing a lower number from what we announced in June. But it is coming back up again and we\u2019re hoping for a good Christmas as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At 30 June 2012, there were 11.9 million data users with 4.4 million smartphones, MTN said, adding that data revenue contributed 15.9% to total revenue in SA.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN Group subscribers up to 182.7 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DA questions MTN bribe accused reinstatement<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN reveals LTE plans<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Turkcell\u2019s MTN lawsuit put on hold<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN lifts interim revenue by 17.5%<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN Group says its per second billing price plan offering, MTN Zone, has close to 14 million users in South Africa, and still growing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":11559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[4512,26,1124,1120,3513,4513],"class_list":["post-25575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-brett-goschen","tag-headline","tag-karel-pienaar","tag-mtn-group","tag-mtn-zone","tag-payasyougo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25575","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25575"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25580,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25575\/revisions\/25580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}