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MTN Nigeria will be propelled by data usage by its consumers in 2023, rather than voice for the first time since its launch some 22 years ago, according to MoneyCentral forecasts.
MTN Nigeria’s data revenues will eventually surpass voice this year as more Nigerians get access to smart phones and as the Telecomm giant invests billions of naira in upgrading its network.
MTN Data revenue rose by 40% year-on-year, in the first quarter (Q1) of 2023 to N227.84 billion on the sustained growth of its active data users and increased data usage. This compares to voice revenues which increased by just 7.3% to N277.6 billion.
“This was enabled by our sustained investment in our networks to drive 4G and 5G coverage and enhance the quality and capacity of the network to support the rising data traffic,” MTN Nigeria said in a statement, with its Q1 results.
Its 4G network now covers 79.3% of the population, up from 79.1% in December 2022, and data usage (GB per user) grew by 31.3% to 7.8GB.
In addition, it added over 804,000 new smartphones to its network in Q1, bringing smartphone penetration to 52.7%, as active data users increased by 14.7% to 41.2 million.
“We continued to advance our home broadband penetration by adding 169k users in Q1, bringing our user base to 1.4 million. This was supported by deploying our 5G fixed wireless access devices, mobile broadband solutions and fibre-to-the-home connectivity,” MTN said.
MTNs mobile subscribers increased by 9.4% to 76.7 million in the first quarter of 2023, as it added 1.1 million subscribers in the period.
“During the quarter, we focused on enhancing the capacity and coverage of our 4G and 5G networks, which supported rising data traffic. Our total data traffic increased by 50.3%, while 4G traffic constitutes 81.6% (up by 5.5pp). In addition, we rolled out additional 170 5G sites in Q1, bringing the population coverage to 4% and expanding the network experience to more smartphone users,” MTN CEO, Karl Toriola said.