Speaking at a media briefing on Monday, Mupita said South African mobile users are opting for devices with dual-Sim support and then shopping around for the best deals from the various networks so as to save money.
When I joined MTN in 2017, South Africa was not a big multi-Sim market and customers were loyal to the brand According to Mupita, dynamism in the prepaid market, as apposed to the more stable and less competitive post-paid segment, means the potential for South Africa’s mobile operators to unlock growth in the next four quarters depends on how well they position their prepaid offerings.
“Now the battle is to show good value and a good network experience because there is a significant portion of that market becoming more sensitive to value,” said Mupita.To compete on network experience in the midst of intense load shedding, MTN South Africa in its previous financial year deployed around R4.5-billion in capex towards network resilience. Mupita said investments in batteries and other backup power mechanisms helped bring uptime across MTN’s 13 000 base stations to 99% or more.