Browsing: MTN

• MTN is divesting its stakes in Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry to Telecel.
• The telco giant will now shift more focus on rising markets Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire.
• With the exception of Cameroon, these three markets account for a combined 18.6% of the Group’s revenue.

South African tech heavyweight MTN has unveiled a key shift in its market strategy involving the divesture of its stakes in Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry businesses to Telecel.

This move is poised to mark a strategic change in bolstering MTN’s presence in Africa in what is perceived as stronger markets within the West and Central …

In the move to a cashless society, Rwandans are also showing appreciation for this leadership and quality of service, again the numbers say it all, MTN customer market share increased by 2.9pp to 65.7%.

Rwanda, as most all  of the rest of Africa, is experiencing continued increase in demand for data. This demand puts pressure on delivering the needed services at affordable rates, especially giving the increasing cost of data. So it is worth noting and a lesson for  the rest of the East African bloc, that the government of Rwanda has taken a bold but very visionary move in changing its Broadband policy.

Rwanda has shown its commitment to accelerate broadband coverage by adopting such measures as the introduction of wireless technology neutrality, which has significantly allowed for improved  efficiency. On the ground, this is translated in the form of rolling out of next generation technologies like LTE and …

Generally speaking, the proliferation of mobile phone technology has increased access to mobile money services (MMS) and is the backbone of mobile money deployment in both rural and urban areas of Africa.

“Despite its enormous benefits, embracing the usage and acceptance of mobile money has mostly been low due to security issues and challenges associated with the system,” warns professor Guma Ali from the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology.

In a paper titled ‘Evaluation of Key Security Issues Associated with Mobile Money Systems in Uganda,’ the pundit suggests the need to carry out a survey to evaluate the key security issues associated with mobile money systems in Uganda (and Africa).

In the study that followed, which employed a descriptive research design, and stratified random sampling technique to group the population, some 741 registered mobile money (MM) users and 447 registered MM agents along with 52 mobile network …

According to the most current known statistics, Cameroon had 9.15 million internet users in January 2021, representing an increase from 7.8 million users in the same month the year prior.

Although the fixed-line broadband industry appears to have stagnated, with only extremely sluggish growth in subscriber numbers, the national penetration rate has increased from 2 per cent in 2011 to 34 per cent in 2021. On the other hand, the number of mobile phone consumers in the country increased from 10 million in 2011 to 24 million in 2020, which encouraged growth in internet usage.

Camtel, despite its established position, was left behind by the growth in the telecom industry and is currently seeking to make amends for this lapse. It got 2G, 3G, and 4G licenses in 2020, and in April of that year, it inked a roaming contract with a rival called MTN, which allows it to utilize …

CBDC is a digital currency issued by the central bank and intended to serve as legal tender while Crypto is a privately issued digital asset based on a network that is distributed across a large number of computers.

The fundamental difference between CBDC and Crypto is the former is asset-backed while the latter is not, so seeks to create value through some intrinsic mechanism like mining. One primary drawback is that the speculative nature of mining makes it considerably volatile.

This has given rise to “stable coins” which are crypto assets that aim to maintain a stable value relative to a specified asset, or a pool of assets. A Global Stable Coin (GSC) is a stable coin with potential reach and adoption across multiple jurisdictions and could achieve substantial volume down the line.…

• Starlink is an internet company owned by America’s billionaire Elon Musk.
• The company targets to service five per cent of internet users in the world, inclusive of Africa’s biggest economy.
• Starlink expects to start operation by the end of the year 2022.

It is about to go down in Nigeria!

This is if data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is anything to go by. The data from this independent National Regulatory Authority for the telecommunications industry in Nigeria shows that two of the country’s telcos have lost over 1.37 million data users.

This is after Starlink, an internet company owned by America’s billionaire Elon Musk, revealed that it was planning to invest in the Nigerian internet service market. MTN and 9mobile have been the biggest casualties.

Read: Nigeria attracts Africa’s highest Foreign Direct Investments beating South Africa, Angola

Despite the hopes, questions abound if Starlink will manage to address …

MTN Rwandacell has listed its shares becoming the first telecom company to list on the Rwanda Stock Exchange (RSE).

The listing will see 100 per cent of MTN Rwandancell listed on the market but only 20 per cent of the shares previously owned by Crystal Telecoms’ (CTL) will be floated to the public.

The telecom listed its shares by introduction making shareholders of Crystal Telecoms’ (CTL) direct shareholders in MTN Rwanda. Crystal telecom was established following a share transfer of 20 per cent of shares held in MTN Rwanda from Crystal Ventures to Crystal Telecom in 2015.

Listing by introduction is a way of listing shares that are already in another exchange with the aim of raising capital but since the shares had already been fully paid for that is not the aim but could serve a purpose later.

Rwandans can now own a piece of the country’s biggest …

The dawn of 5G in Africa is here with us and what was once seen as a dream has turned to reality, albeit with revised expectations. South Africa became the first country in Africa to offer commercial 5G services with Rain, Vodacom and MTN piloting it in various cities and using different methods to reach their clients.  

Rain launched the country’s first commercial 5G network in partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies in 2019 in Johannesburg and Tshwane, offering subscribers unlimited data at speeds of up to 700Mbps for R1,000 per month. Since launch Rain has doubled its 5G coverage,  achieving it by adding more sites and providing a new 5G router to users. 

Vodacom’s launch to the mobile market covered three cities: Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. It was able to fast track the launch by using a temporary spectrum assigned by the South African telecommunications regulator …

MTN Group appoints Chief Financial Officer of MTN Group Ralph Mupita as the new CEO to take over from Rob Shuter as president and CEO who will take over on September 1.

“After a rigorous and extensive search process, we are pleased to have appointed someone of Ralph’s calibre, experience and ability to fill the group president and CEO position. Ralph’s experience as the group CFO, strong knowledge of our businesses and markets, as well as successful background in financial services, M&A and emerging markets, place him in an excellent position to lead the growth and sustainability of the business going forward,” said MTN Group chairman Jonas Mcebisi.

Since April 2017, Mupita has served as the MTN Group CFO and has played a critical role in the development and execution of the group’s strategy, financial performance, capital allocation processes as well as in the resolution of a number of complex …

MTN Uganda recorded a 9.1 per cent increase in net profit to about $120.47 million for the first six months of 2020, according to the company’s latest interim results.

According to the report, the strong performance of mobile money, data and digital income attributed to the performance.

MTN Uganda overall revenues grew by 7.6 per cent to about $244.97 million in the six months while data incomes saw a 30 per cent growth from about $34.84 million to about $45.45million.

The company’s mobile money which has been another cash source grew by 6.5 per cent to about $58.25 million as its active mobile money subscribers hit 7.4 million an increase from 7.3 million.

Meanwhile, its Voice revenues grew from about $124.67 million to about $128. 2 million as the company reported a 10 per cent growth in subscriber base to 13.2 million, up from 13 million last year.

The number …