Africa’s largest mobile operator MTN Group has reported marginal subscriber growth in Nigeria and South Africa while even experiencing user losses in other markets for the third quarter of 2013.

According to a quarterly update of the group’s performance for the period ending September 2013, MTN increased its total connection base to 203.8 million subscribers across all 22 markets where it operates.

In Nigeria, where the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed MTN dominates Africa’s largest mobile market, MTN subscribers reached the 55.6 million mark for the period. Previously, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) pegged MTN’s subscriber base at 55.2 million for the second quarter of the year.

MTN said Nigeria’s mandatory SIM registration deadline in July 2013, the disconnections in the Borneo state following the shutdown of services as well as lower gross connections in the GSM market may have contributed to its slower than expected growth of users in that country.

Meanwhile in South Africa, where MTN is the second largest network operator after Vodacom, MTN marginally increased its user base by adding 233,000 subscribers. This brings MTN SA’s total number of subscribers in the country to 25.2 million at the end of the quarter.

Both the company’s prepaid and postpaid users grew marginally for the period in South Africa, reveals a company statement.

“The third quarter has been characterised by lower than anticipated subscriber growth following on-going price competition and subscriber registration requirements across a number of markets,” said MTN group president and chief executive officer, Sifiso Dabengwa.

Dabengwa added, “Subscriber growth was limited to 1.1% quarter on quarter (QoQ) mainly impacted by disconnections in Nigeria related to registration requirements, slower than expected subscriber growth in South Africa, as well as slower subscriber growth in Iran.”

MTN said its data remained the largest contributor to revenue growth with an increase of 16.6% (YoY).

“Data users increased to 13.9 million as a result of attractive data packages,” read the statement.

Hit-and-miss subscriber growth across Africa, Mideast

Sluggish subscriber growth and even losses have characterised MTN’s other African markets.

In Ghana, MTN’s subscriber numbers grew by just 1.4% to reach 12.7 million in Q3 of 2013 from 11.2 million in the same period in 2012.

Marginal gains in subscriber numbers have been experienced by MTN in the Ivory Coast and Uganda. Ivory Coast subscriptions grew by 1.7% to reach 6.7 million in Q3 2013, while Uganda grew just over 4% to reach 8.4 million subscribers for MTN in that country.

However, MTN Irancell, MTN Sudan and MTN Guinea-Bissau all experienced a decline in subscriber numbers of between 1 and 17%.

MTN says the slowdown in gross connections in Iran has been owing to the “weakening
economy in a fully penetrated market and increased promotional activities by the competitor.”

In Sudan, MTN says its falling number of subscribers was because of “the recently introduced subscriber registration programme, increased competition and a delay in site rollout also impacted subscriber numbers.”

The mobile operator, though, has not explained reasons for its fall in its number of Guinea-Bissau subscribers.