Africa’s giant telecommunications operator, MTN Group, which reported a 10 per cent drop in its first half earnings for 2015, has revealed that it is battling to maintain its lead position in the Nigerian market.
The telco has also lost most of its affluent customers to Etisalat and Airtel due to poor network quality in vital areas like Abuja and Lagos.
MTN Group CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa, who made the disclosure, commended Etisalat for the superiority of its data offering product – EasyBlaze.
Reuters quoted Dabengwa as speaking against the backdrop of MTN’s loss of its high-end users to Etisalat, admitting Etisalat’s network superiority.
He told reporters and analysts at the company’s results presentation in South Africa that it was imperative for his organisation to improve on the quality and speed of its data offering.
“Clearly, Etisalat’s network, from a data point of view, has been better than ours. The key issue really for us has been to improve the data quality and speed,” Dabengwa said.
Etisalat’s network quality in vital areas such as Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial and industrial nerve centre, has been reported to prompt more high-end users to switch to Etisalat from other networks.
According to Reuters, Dabengwa revealed MTN’s plan to use the bulk of a $1.5 billion spending package for the rest of 2015 to expand high-speed networks in Nigeria and South Africa, where rivals such as Vodacom Group and Cell C have slashed voice tariffs to gain market share.
