Over 5 million subscribers of MTN, Africa’s largest mobile phone operator, have ditched their lines with the telco outfit in Nigeria.
MTN reported a slowdown in quarterly subscriber growth on Thursday, caused by stiff competition and tougher regulation in the Nigerian market.
MTN said users increased 0.9 per cent in the three months to end-September, a slowdown from 2 per cent growth the same time a year ago.
Chief Executive Sifiso Dabengwa said the company’s subscriber base in Nigeria fell marginally after more than 5 million users disconnected from the network having failed to register their SIM cards.
“Aggressive price competition, weakening macroeconomic conditions in most of our markets and unfavourable exchange rate movements continued to impact financial performance for the quarter,” Dabengwa said.
Although mobile phone penetration is still well below 100 percent in Africa, growth in users is set to slow sharply in the next five years because the industry finds little commercial logic in deploying networks in remote, rural areas.
From that date anyone buying a SIM card in Nigeria has had to register it under their name by law.
Phone
companies were told to register their existing customers’ SIM cards,
which MTN Nigeria – the biggest telecommunications firm in Nigeria – has
failed to do.
The fine is the largest in the history of telecom
infringements in Nigeria and may redefine the relationships between
telecommunications operators and the regulator.
Nigerians continue
to complain about poor services from mobile network operators and blame
the regulators for not doing enough to solve the problem.
A senior executive at MTN Nigeria tells me that the company will issue a statement on the fine later today.
BBC
No comments:
Post a Comment