Nigeria’s largest telecommunications company, MTN Nigeria disclosed in August its plans to invest N600 billion ($1.5 billion) over the next three years to expand broadband access in Africa’s most populous nation.
MTN Nigeria’s CEO Karl Toriola said on Tuesday that the mobile service provider in the last eight months has been very aggressive with Capex investment in broadband expansion to enable it tap the opportunity created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have now reached about 65% coverage but we still have another 35% goal to cover the country in terms of high-speed mobile broadband,” Toriola said.
According to him, this is because “the demand for digital services remains extremely strong.”
The CEO said MTN Nigeria is “accelerating both capacity and coverage” of its data network that is “driven by lifestyle changes that come from the adoption of data.”
With this, MTN Nigeria is one of the few telecommunications companies in Africa’s largest economy that is taking a position to tap from the opportunity created by the pandemic.
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According to a survey by McKinsey, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic fast-forwarded consumers’ adoption of technology and digital services.
“People are consuming a lot more data both for personal entertainment in the likes of Netflix, YouTube, WhatsApp videos, etc. and as well as the search for increased productivity across all spaces of the economy,” Toriola said at the 12th Annual Pan-Africa Investor Conference by Renaissance Capital.
The CEO said the service provider will continue to compete effectively; not just in terms of technology and data speed but in terms of pricing.
“We are focused on being competitive in terms of pricing, not a race to the bottom but we remain competitive,” he said.
MTN Nigeria’s mobile subscribers closed H1 at 68.9 million, down 9.9 percent from December 2020 due to the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations, which was lifted on 19 April 2021.
“We are around 70 million data subscribers because the ban of the new sim registration up until May affected all the operators in the country through that period, we gained a bit of market share marginally,” Toriola said.
According to him, the company returned with the associate National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) permit to register new SIMs. “We now have a licence to register customers on behalf of the government. we resumed sales of SIM cards somewhere around May, this impacted us and we are scaling up but we are still not at peak capacity of registering SIM cards.”
The CEO revealed during a chat at the virtual conference by Rencap that the NIN registration which seemed like a challenge to many people was like an opportunity to him.
“One is to support the federal government in its drive to register the citizens of the country and secondly the issue of SIM which is registered with NIN issued by NIMC will bring about zero risks of fines around SIM registration.”
Explaining the importance of the telecom industry and particularly MTN Nigeria to the growth and development of the Nigeria economy, Toriola said “as a stand-alone, MTN Nigeria among other things, is a catalyst for banking applications, e-commerce and advertising,” because they have been enabled by the platform that MTN Nigeria has put in place
“We are optimistic about the future,” he said.
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