Top African Telecommunications Network Looses over 4.5milion Isers

MTN lost 4.5-million subscribers in Nigeria as it moved to comply with the government’s demand that it properly registers its customers.

Last year, Nigeria fined MTN $1,000 for each of 5.2-million subscribers not properly identified, in the country’s drive to prevent Boko Haram militants using cellphones to co-ordinate attacks and buy arms.

MTN said in its March quarterly update, released on Thursday, that the Nigerian subscribers it was required to cut off meant its subscriber base in that country dropped 6.9% to 57-million from the end of December, causing its total subscriber base to fall 1.4% to 227.5-million.

Its South African subscriber numbers fell 1.7% from the December quarter, to 30.1-million.

Its domestic prepaid subscriber base declined by 1.8% to 24.9-million, which MTN blamed on “seasonal trends following strong promotions” over Christmas.

Its postpaid base declined 0.8% to 5.2-million, which the network said was largely due to “the alignment of the Autopage subscriber base to MTN’s, the disconnection of telemetry SIMs and the expiration of legacy low-cost packages”.

Its overall average monthly revenue per user in SA fell 9.2% to R83.10 in the March quarter from the December quarter and was nearly 5% lower than the matching quarter last year.

The biggest decline was in prepaid average monthly usage, which fell 10.1% to R68.30, while postpaid fell 5.6% to R154.70.

MTN said its average revenue from SA was hurt during the quarter by “the exceptionally unfortunate 48-hour network outage experienced in February”.

MTN Irancell increased its subscriber base by 1% quarter on quarter to 46.6-million, “in a highly penetrated market”. Local currency average revenue per user decreased by 1.4%.

Data revenue grew by 20.1% in the March quarter compared with a year earlier, contributing 24.2% of the group’s total revenue.

Data traffic rocketed by 123.3% from the previous year while voice traffic grew 12.1%, MTN’s trading update said.

Fine talks

Meanwhile hope of an early resolution of the controversy surrounding the deadline for the payment of a $3.9bn fine slammed against MTN dimmed on Wednesday as the Minister of Communication, Adebayo Shittu, said the planned new talks with the telecommunication firm would be delayed until after the probe by the House of Representatives.

Last month, the House of Representatives had launched a probe into whether Nigeria could reduce the fine, which originally amounted to $5.2bn.  The fine was for missing a deadline to disconnect unregistered SIM card users.

In December, telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communication Commission had cut the fine to $3.9bn.

The probe has hindered efforts by MTN to launch new talks aimed at getting the fine reduced further.

A report by Reuters on Wednesday quoted Shittu as saying, “As soon as the ongoing (parliamentary) investigations are concluded, we will sit down with them (MTN).”

The House launched its investigation after MTN angered lawmakers by snubbing an invitation to its Nigeria’s Chief Executive Ferdi Moolman to appear at the telecoms committee, according to MPs.

MTN had offered in March to pay $1.5bn, according to a document seen by Reuters. And it dropped a legal case against the regulator as the first step in its efforts to reach an out of court settlement.

Last year, Nigeria imposed a deadline on mobile operators to cut off unregistered SIM cards, which MTN missed, amid fears the lines were being used by criminal gangs, including militant Islamist group Boko Haram.