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MTN lost 500 000 subscribers in South Africa in three months

Africa’s mobile sector is a tough market in which subscribers aren’t shy to switch from a network they’re dissatisfied with – just ask MTN.

According to the company’s quarterly earning sheet for the first three months of the year, the mobile operator lost 500 000 subscribers in the first quarter.

In the last quarter of last year, MTN had 30.58 million subscribers in South Africa, but at the end of March it only had 30.07 million. It has to be noted though that MTN has added at least one million subscribers in every quarter since the start of last year.

MTN has however explained that the decline in prepaid subscriber numbers are due to the fact that it pushed rather hard in terms of promotions in the last quarter of the year.

“The prepaid subscriber base declined by 1.8% QoQ to 24.9 million, largely impacted by seasonal trends following strong promotions in Q4 15. The postpaid base decline of 0.8% to 5.2 million was impacted by the alignment of the Autopage subscriber base to MTN’s, the disconnection of telemetry SIMs and the expiration of legacy low-cost packages,” MTN explained.

Data still remained one of the biggest money pushers for the company, making up over a third of its revenue – and seeing a 22.9% increase year-on-year.

“This was supported by a 12% QoQ increase in the value of data bundles sold as well as an increase in smartphones to 9.2 million. Improved 3G and LTE coverage supported a 29% increase in ARPU for those customers who moved from 2G to 3G and an increase of 19% for those customers who moved from 3G to LTE. Data usage increased by 58.5% YoY. ARPU declined by 9.2% QoQ,” it added.

MTN added that it disconnected as many as 4.5 million subscribers in Nigeria due to the pending legal action brought against it in a massive multi-million dollar law suit.

“In order to mitigate any future regulatory challenges, the Group took an exceptionally conservative stance by disconnecting all subscribers who could possibly be deemed to be non-compliant. This has had a significant unfavourable impact on total subscriber growth and revenue in Q1 16.”

The South African Customer Satisfaction Index (SAcsi) also released a report yesterday, in which MTN fared the worst out of all the mobile networks in the country in terms of the internet access it provides.

MTN scored the lowest (and below par) with 66.3 out of 100, but the top of the pack was led by Telkom with a score of 69.7. The average for the sector is 68.2 out of 100.

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