MTN Loosing the Portability Battle

Confident of its leadership position in both voice and data subscription in the telecoms market, MTN has said it cannot be moved by the recent figures on mobile number portability (MNP) that was released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

According to MTN, it remained the biggest operator in the market today, with the highest number of voice and data subscriptions, and it is therefore not unexpected that MTN would have largest share of the total number of all subscribers who have ported from one network to another.

NCC had last week, released the figures in percentage of the number of subscribers that ported from one network to another since MNP was launched on April 22, 2013.

According to the release, out of the total number of subscribers that ported, 49 per cent was from MTN, 23 per cent was from Globacom, 17 per cent was from Airtel, while only 11 per cent ported from the Etisalat’s

network, an indication that Etisalat had the least number of subscribers that ported out of its network, while MTN had the highest number of subscribers that ported out of its network.

Reacting to the release, General Manager, Corporate Affairs at MTN, Funmi Omogbenigun, told THISDAY that MTN was not losing out in number porting as widely speculated, but that being the operator with the largest number of subscribers in both data and voice telephony, it was not out of place for it to also record the highest number of ported subscribers. 

According to NCC statistics on subscriber subscription, out of the 114 million subscribers across voice telephony networks, MTN is leading with over 50 million subscribers on its network, and out of the 48.8 million active data subscription on the telecoms operators’ networks, MTN is also leading with 24.5 million subscriptions on its network.

Worried that the NCC release could be misleading because it only gave the number of ported subscribers in percentage instead of in figures, Omogbenigun said: “Indications so far are that about 22,000 subscribers across all four networks out of an industry total of about 114 million, have exercised their right to port. With regard to the recent publication, the percentage ascribed to MTN (49 per cent) refers to this proportion of subscribers out of the 22,000 that have ported. This is consistent with our market share as the network with largest subscriber base of over 50 million customers.”

Giving details on what the company is doing to provide continuous hitch-free telecoms services to its huge subscriber number, Omogbenigun said: “MTN is constantly expanding capacity driven by our commitment to improve quality, capacity and flexibility. That is why we continue to successfully integrate new sites to address potential capacity requirements as well as coverage.”

Speaking of coverage under its National Fibre Expansion (NFP) project, Omogbenigun said: “We have been able to bring our national fibre backbone up to over 10,500km nationwide in this year, touching all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. As a result of site build roll-out and fibre deployment, we have network presence in 765 local government areas out of 774 in the country.”

She said the coverage credentials remained one of several reasons why more subscribers should join and remain on the MTN network.