MTN Group CEO, Sifiso Dabengwa, has commended Etisalat, Nigeria’s fastest growing and most innovative telecommunications company, 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 over his company’s. MTN reported a 10.3 per cent decline in first-half earnings for 2015.
He told journalists 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 speeds,” Mr. Dabengwa said.
Etisalat’s good 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.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) barely 6 months into Etisalat’s launch of service in Nigeria awarded the company Nigeria’s best network based on quality of service indices.
In just 6 years of operations, Etisalat Nigeria has become a major industry player with a growing subscriber base of 22 million in a highly competitive market. Its portfolio of voice and data-centric products include – easy starter, easycliq, easybusiness, and easyblaze; all tailor-made to meet the needs of its customers.
Etisalat Nigeria is one of the 19 operations of the Etisalat Group that spans across Africa, Middle East and Asia serving over 182 million subscribers; and it is committed to delivering innovative and quality services to its growing subscribers.
Reuters said Mr. Dabengwa revealed plans by MTN to use the bulk of a $1.5 billion spending package for the rest of this year 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.
He said, however, that spending on a network in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is unlikely to deliver a strong enough performance to offset the impact of a sharp economic slowdown that is curbing consumers’ disposable income.
“We expect the balance of the year to remain challenging for MTN Nigeria,” the MTN CEO said.
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