MTN data revenue surge by 36% on increased smartphone usage – Report

MTN Nigeria, a telecommunications provider, has recorded a 36 percent increase in its data revenue in the nine-month period of 2023.

In its recent report, the company’s data revenue grew by 36 percent from N549 million in 9M’22 to N748 million in 9M’23, which was on the back of a change in its data bundle, increased penetration of smartphones, and investment in network coverage to enhance the customer experience.

The report disclosed that the increase in its data revenue can also be attributed to a 13 percent increase in its active data subscribers to 43.1 million, adding 3.6 million active users in 9M 2023.

On the mobile subscriber base, the MTN subscriber base grew by two million users in the nine months to 77.6 million. This was supported by its management initiatives and interventions to ramp up gross connections.

MTN’s report also revealed a 29.1 percent increase in data usage per user, reaching 8.6GB, while the number of smartphones connected to their network saw a commendable rise of 7.6 percent, pushing smartphone penetration to 53.4 percent, a 1.4 percentage point rise compared to the previous year.

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“During the nine-month period, data traffic rose to 46.5 percent, with the 4G network accounting for 83.7 percent of the total traffic (up 5.2pp YoY). Our 4G network now covers 80.5 percent of the population, up from 79.1 percent in December 2022, while its 5G network now covers 7.5 percent of the population,” it said.

Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN, said, “We are on track to reach our 10 percent target by year-end. 5G enables us to advance our home broadband penetration. We added over 560k home broadband users in the nine months, bringing our base to 1.8 million. This was supported by our 5G fixed wireless access devices, mobile broadband solutions, and fiber-to-the-home connectivity.”

“We plan to roll out capex during Q4 to reach 83% 4G and 10% 5G population coverage by year- end,” he said.

Commenting on how the company intends to achieve the coverage, Toriola said MTN will leverage the additional 2.6GHz spectrum to enhance network capacity.

“In May 2023, on a lease agreement for 900MHz and 1800MHz spectrum from NTEL for a 2-year period, MTN acquired an additional 10MHz frequency division duplex (FDD) in the 2.6GHz spectrum in September 2023. These investments enable us to expand the coverage and capacity of our network more efficiently to meet the rising demand for data and improve the quality of our offerings and customer experience.”

“Also, this will help us sustain growth in data traffic and further drive our Own the Home strategy by leveraging the 5G fixed wireless access devices, mobile broadband solutions, and fiber-to-the-home connectivity,” he said.