MTN South Africa increased revenue by 7.7%, to R35.6 million, off the back of strong data growth.
The group this morning presented its results for the year to December and said its South African subscriber base gained 16.9%, to 22 million, due to growth in the prepaid segment.
Data, excluding SMSes, gained 27.7% as smartphones leapt 128%, to 3.6 million. MTN, which has 10.9 million data users, says data accounts for 12% of revenue, excluding SMSes.
At the end of the year, there were 5.5 million 3G devices on the local network, which includes smartphones, 1.4 million dongles and other data devices, MTN says.
During the year, MTN spent R4.1 billion on modernising the network by introducing IP technology. It added 313 2G and 598 3G base stations during the year, taking the base to 9 785.
Fibre rollout is still a priority and the company has trenched 89% of the Johannesburg-to-Durban route, as well as 86% of the Johannesburg-to-Bloemfontein route and 58% of the Bloemfontein-to-Cape Town route.
MTN SA Karel Pienaar says data use has increased threefold over the past year and the group transferred a petabyte during February.
MTN also saw airtime and subscriptions grow 4.2% as prepaid airtime and subscription revenue increased by 14%. “The strong growth in handset revenue of 45.3% was as a result of robust demand for both entry-level handsets and demand for smartphones,” it says.
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