The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Uganda, Themba Khumalo has revealed that the telecommunication giants are planning to invest more in providing data services to both the high income and low income people in Uganda.
Khumalo in an interview with ITnewsAfrica said they are looking at increasing their focus on data solutions to stimulate growth and increase connectivity penetration in Uganda.
Themba Khumalo, MTN Uganda CEO
“WiMAX/EDMA solutions for the corporate sector and 3G to target the mass-market further. Since 97% of our customers are using prepaid services, we want to push prepaid 3G to the lower and middle segments and we are constantly discussing with vendors to lower the costs of 3G-enabled handsets,” Khumalo says adding that the key target will be providing low-cost wireless 3G for the consumer market.
He says while MTN currently gets 4% of its annual revenue from data services, the company has set a target of getting up to 20% of its revenue for 2011 from 3G, mobile money and new innovations.
“We see a positive uptake in our mobile money services for relevant customers, with a consumer market of 1.3 million and a 20% penetration in our customer base. Also, there are possibilities in increasing user applications and allowing direct payments with a mobile wallet and providing value-added services by being able to purchase airtime from mobile money agents,” Khumalo said.
The company this week announced its customers will be able to purchase goods and services using their mobile money accounts. Uganda has also been selected to pilot a new partnership between MTN and Western Union to offer mobile money transfer services across the globe.
“We are also looking at introducing mobile gaming and a targeted mobile advertising platform for companies. So far, 3 million customers signed up to volunteer to receive advertising,” Khumalo revealed, confirming the telecom giants will now become a mobile advertising media.
Another MTN initiative
MTN Uganda is the leading telecommunications company in Uganda, with 6,3 million subscribers of the estimated 11 million subscribers in the East African country. Khumalo said their subscription base grew from 5.2 million in December 2009 to now 6.3 million, despite increasing competition in the mobile telecommunications market.
MTN, the second mobile telecommunications provider after Celtel (now Zain or is it Aritel) has outmuscled the pioneers and new entrants Warid Telecom, Orange Uganda, Uganda Telecom, and Smile Telecom in the mobile subscriptions market. Despite recent price wars that saw a huge reduction in calling rates to 3 Uganda shillings tariff across all networks, it expected the arena of competition will shift from voice (calling) to providing data and related information products.