Why We Stole Saka from Etisalat - MTN NIgeria

Vunderkind

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Judging by what we have decided to tag the “porting wars”, it would seem that MTN directed its highly popular (not to mention controversial) Saka don Port advertisement campaign against their rival, Etisalat, and judging by statistical reports, Etisalat rose gallantly to the challenge. Right now, MTN and Etisalat are at loggerheads for the ‘growing market’, a breath of fresh air brought about the choice of switching network providers in the country.

MTN Nigeria has however spoken up and confidently says that the Mobile Number Portability Scheme (MNP) which was launched in April 22, 2013, would not affect its market share, as MTN Nigeria is the biggest mobile telecommunications provider in Nigeria.

In a briefing held for market analysis in Johannesburg, South Africa, Brett Goschen, then CEO of the company, gave some information about why Etisalat is their greatest competitor among the big four telecommunication firms.

Goschen (who is now the CFO of MTN group) says Globacom and Airtel have slowed down in their drive in the market, while Etisalat keeps going on, and it is currently one of the strongest forces in the Northern parts of Nigeria.

Commenting on their competitors, Goschen says, “We are all focused on different areas. Airtel is not rolling out much at all. They are sitting with headroom, so their traffic rollout is pretty small. We are not actually seeing much activity. Glo have announced they are going to be investing quite substantially in their capex rollout this year, but we haven’t seen much on the ground. Etisalat are the ones probably rolling out most aggressively at the moment. But we are focused on different areas.”

Top MTN officials say “our market share is in Lagos and so we are focused very much in that area. Etisalat are particularly focused in the North. We are also focused there because that is where the growth market is coming from. In the South‐East we are very congested, so competitors see that as a weakness. So they are focusing their efforts there while we are trying to increase our capacity in the South‐East as well.”

It is quite impressive, what Etisalat has been able to achieve, considering the fact that they are there last to enter the mobile telecoms market running. It would appear that most of Etisalat’s steam is directed at the northern parts of Nigeria. Etisalat has been able to make a total of 15 million subscribers – counting only active connections – and had an impressive percentage growth rate (10.17% in the second and third quarter, 2012)

MTN threw out its Saka Don Port campaign to score a direct hit on Etisalat, its rival.

According to Goschen, in the same week Mobile Number Portability kicked off, “The mobile number portability kicked off on Monday this week. We’ve done a survey. There is a high rate of multi‐SIMming in this market, something like 40%. A lot of them have numbers on other networks that people already know. They like to keep other numbers because of maybe service quality in a particular area, or also to take advantage of promotions on a particular network. So we see the number being very low in Nigeria for those reasons. There have been a couple of reports so far this week and they have been pretty neutral for us. We don’t really believe there will be a significant impact on MTN Nigeria.”
 
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