MTN Nigeria Subscribers Grow to 76.5 Million

MTN Nigeria has published its financial year results – ending December 2020 – which reveal an increase of 12.2 million mobile subscribers to total 76.5 million.

The telco also recorded:

• Active data users increased by 7.4 million to 32.6 million
• Service revenue increased by 14.7% to NGN1.3 trillion
• Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 9.7% to N685.7 billion
• EBITDA margin declined by 2.5 percentage point (pp) to 50.9%
• Profit before tax (PBT) grew by 2.6% to N298.9 billion
• Earnings per share (EPS) rose by 0.9% to N10.1

MTN Launches Supersonic AirFibre in South Africa

MTN has launched its Supersonic AirFibre offering in South Africa. The product is said to overcome distance and a lack of infrastructure in urban, township and rural communities to bring fibre-quality connectivity to more households across the country.

“We are breaking down the traditional barriers to entry that have denied much access to a modern, connected life”, says Calvin Collett, MD of MTN SA’s ISP: Supersonic. “From Soweto to Swellendam, we believe that every household deserves the speed and benefits of fibre-like connectivity, and through AirFibre we believe we can achieve this.”

Supersonic AirFibre is expected to bring high-speed, inexpensive, and uncapped connectivity solutions to areas in which traditional fibre installations are not available. Built on unlicensed spectrum, the solution was designed, built and is maintained by MTN’s technology team to deliver a network quality that is in line with MTN’s standards, at affordable rates.

Due to the current major lack of available spectrum, MTN has located unlicensed spectrum – a readily available resource – and combined it with innovative technology now available to effectively leverage open spectrum. This is something that was previously not possible or stable.

Supersonic AirFibre will be made available in areas where customers register their demand for the offering. Launch costs of Supersonic AirFibre are:

• R399 for 5Mbps uncapped
• R499 for 10Mbps uncapped
• R599 for 20Mbps uncapped
• R799 for 50Mbps uncapped
• R999 for 100Mbps uncapped