SOUTH AFRICA, AUGUST 9, 2016 – MTN group plans to add eight million new subscribers by the end of its financial year, with 1.1 million of those coming from SA, according to South African based ITWeb.Statistics indicate that since October 2015, MTN lost 18 million subscribers across its 22 operations due to subscriber registration processes.
The turbulent period for the telecoms giant was as a result of disconnection of 18 million customers across the group, in the past nine months, as part of new regulations in a number of its operations.
MTN struggled to add many new subscribers during the six months to 30 June 2016, reporting a fairly flat 232.6 million total subscribers compared to 232.5 million in December 2015. This as subscriber registration processes in a number of its territories put pressure on customer numbers by forcing non-complying subscribers to be dropped.
The group was forced to disconnect 6.6 million subscribers over the six-month period in Nigeria, Uganda and Cameroon. Since October 2015, approximately 18 million subscribers across the group’s 22 operations were disconnected to ensure compliance with various subscriber registration processes.
Phuthuma Nhleko, executive chairman said that as far as customer disconnections are concerned, he believes the group “broke the back of this last year” to become as compliant as possible.
“In past years, we have sometimes added 20 million subscribers, but of course because of all of these very significant disconnections, we have had to start from a very low base and reconnect those subscribers, so we are hoping to add eight million subscribers by the end of the year,” he said at the group’s interim results presentation on Friday.
