MTN Slashes Data Price In South Africa, Mum On Nigeria

MTN South Africa has taken the axe to prepaid data prices, reducing the cost of 10GB of data (including another 10GB for use at certain times of the night) to R149.

It was learnt that the new MTN BozzaGigs LTE tariff plan also offers 10GB (5GB plus 5GB night-time data) for R99 and comes a week after Vodacom cut headline prepaid data prices, with 1GB of data falling to R85 from R99 (approx. N2,847.50k) previously.

The new MTN deals have a validity period of 30 days. Prepaid customers will have to move to the BozzaGigs LTE plan before they can take advantage of the prices.

In addition to the 10GB and 20GB plans, MTN is also offering a 15GB (7.5GB plus 7.5GB) plan for R129, also with 30-day validity from purchase.

Although there hasn’t been much by way of an organised, meaningful effort to get telcos in Nigeria to review their data prices downwards, a precedent seems to have now been set in MTN’s home country, South Africa.

With over 68 million MTN subscribers in Nigeria as of December 2019, Africa’s most populous country is easily the telco’s largest market. As a matter of fact, it has twice as many subscribers in Nigeria as its home country – 30.2 million subscribers.

The height of the squabble was in 2015 when the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) handed MTN Nigeria a massive USD 5.2bn fine for not complying, on time, with rules regarding unregistered SIM cards on its network. That fine was eventually reduced to USD 1.6bn, of which MTN has reportedly paid NGN 275bn.

While voice revenue took a blow, data revenue is rising fast. MTN said traffic patterns changed following the locked of Lagos, Abuja, and the Ogun States as part of initial responses to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria

Between January and March, the company’s total number of active data subscribers jumped by 1.7 million to 26.8 million. Data revenue equally witnessed growth as it increased by 59.2 percent during the first quarter.