{"id":871695,"date":"2026-08-24T10:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=871695"},"modified":"2026-08-24T10:39:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:39:26","slug":"people-are-kissing-airtime-goodbye-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/871695\/people-are-kissing-airtime-goodbye-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"People are kissing Airtime goodbye in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africans are increasingly moving away from traditional airtime, with mobile data and internet-based communication becoming a much larger part of how they communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN South Africa\u2019s interim financial results for the six months ended 30 June 2026 show a clear decline in traditional voice usage, while data consumption continues to surge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN said its South African voice revenue declined by 10.2% year-on-year during the period. The company attributed the decline to a fundamental change in customer behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVoice revenue declined by 10.2% YoY, reflecting a structural shift in customer preferences as consumers increasingly migrate from out-of-bundle usage to bundled offers and pure data use,\u201d MTN said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis includes the adoption of VoIP and digital messaging platforms in place of traditional voice services.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This shift is particularly significant in the prepaid market, which accounts for most of MTN South Africa\u2019s customer base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prepaid service revenue declined by 3.3% year on year, with MTN pointing to several factors, including an adjustment to its airtime lending offering and \u201congoing voice substitution by consumers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, customers are increasingly using data bundles to communicate via platforms such as WhatsApp, FaceTime, and other over-the-top (OTT) and voice-over-internet (VoIP) services, rather than paying for traditional cellular minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, demand for mobile data is rising sharply. MTN South Africa\u2019s network data traffic increased by 27.7% year on year, highlighting how quickly customer behaviour is changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data revenue increased by 4.0%, with prepaid data revenue growing 4.4%. MTN said the pace of growth accelerated in the second quarter, with data revenue growth reaching 5.0%, up from 3.8% in the first quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amount of data consumed by individual customers also increased. Average monthly data consumption among prepaid subscribers rose by 23.6% to 4.9GB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postpaid customers consumed considerably more, averaging 32.3GB per month \u2013 an increase of 32.0% year on year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN said this was supported by the growing adoption of fixed wireless access and home connectivity products, including Shesh@5G and MTN AirFibre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strong financial performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The trend in South Africa mirrors a broader change across MTN\u2019s operations. At the group level, data remained the company\u2019s primary growth engine, accounting for 49.9% of service revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN\u2019s Ghana operation also reported a decline in traditional voice revenue, which fell 1.6%. The group said this was \u201cconsistent with the structural migration of customer communications from traditional voice towards data-led and OTT channels\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN Group service revenue increased by 17.5% in constant currency, or 9.7% on a reported basis, to R115.3 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growth was led by Ghana and Nigeria, while South Africa recorded more modest service revenue growth of 1.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN\u2019s overall financial performance remained strong. Group EBITDA before once-off items increased by 24.4% in constant currency to R56.0 billion, while adjusted headline earnings per share increased by 21.3% to 793 cents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reported headline earnings per share fell 5.8%, however, partly due to a R3.9 billion non-cash impairment of MTN\u2019s 49% stake in Irancell, alongside foreign exchange losses in South Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN deployed R19.7 billion in capital expenditure during the period and increased cash upstreamed from subsidiaries by 69.5% to R13.9 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company did not declare an interim dividend but confirmed a R6 billion share buyback programme, which is expected to be executed after the current closed period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africans are increasingly moving away from traditional airtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":871697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: Media ID is not available","_sma_x_post_id":"2091806228175331523","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2185116532308746","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[28,853],"class_list":["post-871695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-mtn","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871695","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\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871700,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871695\/revisions\/871700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}