{"id":7510,"date":"2012-03-08T22:14:16","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T22:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=7510"},"modified":"2012-11-14T14:45:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T12:45:45","slug":"mtn-expects-20-hit-on-interconnect-revenue-in-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/7510\/mtn-expects-20-hit-on-interconnect-revenue-in-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN expects 20% hit on interconnect revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN<\/a> (MTN) SA MD, Karel Pienaar<\/a>, said that the group is expecting a 20% decline in interconnect revenue for 2012.<\/p>\n

The latest round of interconnect rate cuts kicked in on March 1, 2012, with peak mobile termination rates (MTR) down from R0.73, to R0.56 per minute; and off-peak mobile termination rates down from R0.65, to R0.52 per minute.<\/p>\n

In reporting its annual results on Wednesday (March 7, 2012), MTN Group noted that interconnect revenue declined 9.8% for its SA operation, following the reduction of mobile termination rates to 73 cents, from 89 cents in March 2011.<\/p>\n

Average revenue per user per month (ARPU) reduced 12%, primarily due to lower interconnect revenue, the company said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be bigger (than 2011). If you look at the past year, it\u2019s been about 10%. Effectively, if you look at the percentage, it should be double that. It is a lot. We have to work very hard to make up that revenue. We have done so far and we hope to maintain that,\u201d Pienaar told BusinessTech.<\/p>\n

He pointed specifically to continued growth in its data provisions, along with a rise in customers.<\/p>\n

MTN announced strong growth in data revenue, which was up 27.7% (excluding SMSes).
\nData, including SMS, now accounts for 21.4% of revenue in SA \u2013 up from 19% in 2010, and 14.8% in 2009. Data excluding SMS accounts for 12% of revenue, it said.<\/p>\n

SA contributes 57.4% and 35.2% to group data and SMS revenue, respectively, and remains the largest driver of growth in data services.<\/p>\n

The group grew its subscriber base by 16.2% to 164.5 million with 22 million based in South Africa.<\/p>\n

MTN said it hoped to add 20.3 million subscribers in 2012, including 2.9 million in SA, and four million each in Nigeria and Iran.<\/p>\n

Vodacom<\/a> said that the reduction in MTR rates would have an impact on its bottom-line, but would not provide a specific guidance on the amount.<\/p>\n

Cell C<\/a>, meanwhile, only noted that it had also lowered its rates according to call termination rate regulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN (MTN) SA MD, Karel Pienaar, says that the group is expecting a 20% decline in interconnect revenue for 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1484,42,26,1903,1904,28,27],"class_list":["post-7510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-arpu","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-interconnect-rates","tag-mobile-termination-rates","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7510","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=7510"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26492,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7510\/revisions\/26492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}