MTN Nigeria has announced its unaudited results for the quarter ended 31 March 2021. The numbers are what we have come to expect from the carrier for an extended period now: revenues from all streams and services netted the carrier billions of Naira, save for messaging revenue that was hidden from the earnings breakdown by services.
The decline was linked to more subscribers ignoring the service for other massaging services like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger.
SMS revenue remains a crucial part of MTN Nigeria’s yearly and quarterly turnover – behind Voice and Data. In the company’s audited financial report at the end of December 2020, SMS revenue stood at N3.33 billion, failing to surpass the N3.66 billion recorded during the same period in 2019.
Across the globe, the last ten years have been both transformational and disruptive to the business models of telecom companies. Increased broadband penetration and growing internet adoption have created a paradigm shift that has seen telecom subscribers adopt over-the-top (OTT) services for communication needs.about:blank
Elsewhere, MTN’s total active data users also declined by 71,000 to 32.5 million during the same quarter. According to the carrier, the decline in total active data users was caused by a series of regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations.
Research by Nairametrics further corroborated with the carrier’s report showing that the four major telco players in Nigeria have lost 11.8 million customers since the implementation of the NIN-SIM card ban by the federal government in December 2020.
According to the research, the total subscriber base of the four major telco firms in Nigeria reduced from 207.58 million at the end of November 2020 to 195.73 million in February 2021. This represents a 5.71% decline within the space of three months.
