MTN plans to add 8m new subscribers in 2016

MTN group has indicated plans to add eight million new subscribers by the end of its financial year, with 1.1 million of those coming from South Africa.

Statistics has shown that MTN lost 18 million subscribers across its 22 operations due to subscriber registration processes since October 2015.

The company found itself in this position as a result of the disconnection of 18 million customers across the group, in the past nine months, as part of new regulations in a number of its operations.

MTN struggled to acquire many new subscribers during the six months up until 30 June 2016, reporting a fairly flat 232.6 million total subscribers compared to 232.5 million in December 2015.

This subscriber registration processes in a number of the company’s territories put pressure on customer numbers by forcing non-complying subscribers to be dropped.

Approximately 18 million subscribers across the group’s 22 operations were disconnected to ensure compliance with various subscriber registration processes since October 2015.

The group was however, forced to disconnect 6.6 million subscribers over the six-month period in Nigeria, Uganda and Cameroon.

Phuthuma Nhleko, executive chairman said that as far as customer disconnections are concerned, he believes the group “broke the back of this last year” to become as compliant as possible.

“In past years, we have sometimes added 20 million subscribers, but of course because of all of these very significant disconnections, we have had to start from a very low base and reconnect those subscribers, so we are hoping to add eight million subscribers by the end of the year,” Nhleko said at the recent group’s interim results presentation.