{"id":36559,"date":"2013-04-25T07:53:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T05:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=36559"},"modified":"2013-04-25T09:11:39","modified_gmt":"2013-04-25T07:11:39","slug":"mtn-hits195-million-subscribers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/36559\/mtn-hits195-million-subscribers\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN hits 195 million subscribers"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN<\/a> says it is connecting approximately 195 million people in 22 countries in a quarterly update for the period ended March 2013, however, its operation in South Africa experienced a 1.9%\u00a0decline to\u00a024.950 million from 25.421 million in Q4 2012.<\/p>\n

MTN Group President and CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa<\/a> said: “The group started the year strongly, increasing subscriber numbers by 3.2% quarter on quarter to 195.4\u00a0million. This supported growth in traffic volumes and local currency revenue.”<\/p>\n

“In South Africa, despite a slow\u00a0start to the year, MTN maintained its market share and reviewed its market offerings to be more competitive.”<\/p>\n

MTN South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN says that after a strong 2012, the past quarter was characterised by a weaker consumer environment as well as\u00a0increased pricing competition in SA.<\/p>\n

The business recorded 470,000 net disconnections, a quarter on quarter (QoQ)\u00a0decrease of 1.9% in the traditionally weak period, to\u00a024.950 million which was further exacerbated by the strong subscriber growth\u00a0recorded in the last quarter of 2012.<\/p>\n

In the period under review, the average price per minute (PPM) declined\u00a05.5% compared to the same period a year earlier, placing some pressure on revenue growth.<\/p>\n

Blended ARPU declined\u00a08.1% to R110.62 as a result of promotional activities and a decline in effective tariffs.<\/p>\n

However, MTN says that, towards the end of the\u00a0quarter, there has been some sign of an improvement in both subscriber and revenue trends.<\/p>\n

“Data revenue remains a key focus for the business. In the past quarter, active data subscribers were 13.3\u00a0million, data revenue, including MTN Business and mobile data, increased approximately 15.7% YoY,” the group said.<\/p>\n

MTN Nigeria<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following a challenging 2012, there was a continued improvement in the key operating metrics for the\u00a0Nigerian business in the past quarter, MTN says.<\/p>\n

“We recorded net additions of 3.9 million, an increase of 8.1% QoQ, as\u00a0the market rebounded following the significant price reductions during August and September 2012.<\/p>\n

“Encouragingly,\u00a0revenue growth continued to track higher since bottoming out in September last year and local currency ARPU\u00a0remained stable. We regained market share by 2 percentage points to 49.7%,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

It says that in the past\u00a0quarter, data subscribers reached 22.8 million, and data revenue increased approximately 63.5% in local\u00a0currency YoY.<\/p>\n

“We made good progress on our network rollout, adding 450 new 2G sites during the quarter compared to 211 in\u00a0the same period last year. We also added 259 co-located 3G sites, bringing the total number of 3G sites to\u00a03,508,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

Other Operations<\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN Ghana increased subscribers by 2.5% QoQ, adding 290,000 subscribers.\u00a0MTN says the business performed well with stable YoY local currency ARPU. A strong performance
\nin the data market supported ARPU, with data subscribers reaching 4.1 million and data revenue increasing\u00a067.3% in local currency YoY.<\/p>\n

MTN Irancell<\/a> increased subscribers 2.6% QoQ. Data subscribers remained stable at 10.1 million\u00a0at the end of the quarter and data revenue increased 58.6% in local currency YoY.<\/p>\n

MTN Cameroon increased subscribers by 2.6% QoQ, adding 192,000 subscribers in the period. Data subscribers reached 600,000 at the\u00a0end of the quarter and data revenue increased 42.9% in local currency YoY.<\/p>\n

MTN Ivory Coast increased subscribers by 5.8% QoQ, adding 354,000 subscribers, while
\ndata subscribers reached 900,000 at the end\u00a0of the quarter and data revenue increased 41.1% in local currency YoY.<\/p>\n

MTN Uganda added 248,000 subscribers, growing 3,2% QoQ, while\u00a0data subscribers reached 1.2\u00a0million at the end of the quarter and data revenue increased 53.6% in local currency YoY.<\/p>\n

“MTN Syria continued to operate in a highly challenging environment with no improvement in the security\u00a0situation. The business recorded net disconnections of 364,000, a 6% decrease QoQ, with both revenue and\u00a0margins coming under pressure. This is expected to continue,” MTN said.<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

Bharti to challenge MTN Uganda dominance?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN can accumulate, say analysts<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN in $3 billion loan deal<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN bidding for Maroc Telecom?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN could spend R71bn on acquisition: CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Telecom\u2019s hottest property<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN targeting South East Asia?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What MTN\u2019s top dogs earn<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN is edging towards 200 million subscribers, with the group reaching 195.4 million in its latest quarterly update.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":25956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1484,26,28,1890],"class_list":["post-36559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-arpu","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-sifiso-dabengwa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559","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=36559"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36564,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions\/36564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}