29
Oct
Going by the quarterly update of MTN Group released on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), South Africa, the Nigerian arm of the telecommunications firm is said to have showed a significant decline in its growth projection.
MTN Nigeria, which is the largest of all the about 22 countries the telecommunications firm currently ply its trade has over 58 million subscribers, but has witnessed loss of subscribers of late.
Though certain reasons were adduced for the sudden downward profile of the firm, but telecoms experts are of the opinion that the decline could have resulted majorly from the Nigerian Communications Commission launched Mobile Number Portability about 18 months ago.
Indeed, in the reported third quarter report of the group released at the weekend, MTN Nigeria recorded 58,363,000 million subscribers, a figure lower than the 58,446,000 million subscribers it reported in the previous quarter.
However, MTN said that the decline is largely impacted by regulatory restrictions and even instability in Nigeria’s northern areas where an insurgency by Boko Haram militants is taking place.
Meanwhile, the regulatory restrictions MTN referred to are related to a ‘dominant operator’ ruling, which prevents MTN from lowering its tariff below certain threshold to draw attract subscribers from competitors to its network.
The NCC has threatened to sanction MTN Nigeria for abusing its dominant position in the country’s telecommunications market.
“MTN reported encouraging results for the third quarter… however, performance was impacted by continued aggressive competition and stringent regulatory requirements,” said MTN’s Chief Executive Officer, Sifiso Dabengwa, in a statement.
“Nigerian operation faced a challenging regulatory environment resulting in lower-than-expected growth,” he added.
Though Dabengwa described the regulatory restrictions relating to the dominant-operator as having led to a “marginal decline” in the subscriber base in Africa’s most populous country, he, however, said the situation “will affect second-half revenue growth.”
Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria’s losses have been tempered by gains recorded by the telecoms firm in South Africa, its home country as it’s South African operations rebounded for the period, adding 1.4 million net additions for the quarter.
The South African operations increased its subscriber base by 5.7 per cent to 26.7 million, according to the third quarter report.
Furthermore, MTN South Africa’s prepaid subscriber base increased by 7.1 per cent to 21.2 million as well as postpaid subscribers, which grew marginally to 5.5 million 2.0 million.
MTN stated that the growth in the prepaid segment was mainly driven by competitive offers such as rush-hour and talk free initiatives.
“The South African operation delivered an improved performance in the prepaid segment supported by competitive offers,” said Dabengwa.
Source: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/business/184389-mtn-nigeria-s-operation-suffers-slow-growth