MTN targets 2 million subscribers by end of year

MTN Rwanda, the country’s first and largest mobile operator by market share expects to hit 2 million customers by the end of the year. According to Yvonne Makoro, Senior Marketing Executive of the Nyarutarama based Telecom Company, the company is optimistic that it would achieve this by providing good and quality services to their clients. MTN Rwanda boasts of the widest network coverage in the country with 1.7 million subscribers, according to Makolo. However, contrary to this figure the firms parent company, MTN Group , said in its latest report that subscriber base in is about 1.2 million subscribers. “Our plan is to reach the target which we set in our effort to being the leading telecom operators in the country,” said Makoro. However, with the entry of another player Tigo, which will soon launch operations as third national operator MTN Rwanda does not enjoy the monopoly it used to. In their continuous campaign to deliver better services to their clients, MTN Rwanda unveiled a new Customer Service Centre (CSC) in Rubangura house, Kigali City centre two weeks ago. MTN is also set to roll out a Mobile Money product which is meant to extend affordable, accessible and user friendly money transfer services to billions of un-banked people around the world. Makolo said that the company is working on the project and the service will be rolled out in due course. The service is already being used by MTN Uganda and other regional telecom companies including Safaricom of Kenya and Zain. With the launch of MTN zone where callers make big savings of between 5-90 percent in areas where there is low network utilisation, the company was targeting 20,000 subscribers from the commercial launch. MTN says that it is targeting 200,000 subscribers and hopes to acquire 50 percent share of the 6 million mobile subscribers that Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) is targeting by 2012. However, according to the African Economic Outlook (AEO) report released in Kigali recently by the African Development Bank (AfDB) MTN’s market share dropped from 96 percent to 80 percent by the end of 2008. The Group said its market share had dropped to 83 percent as at June 30, 2009 but expects it to recover by 4.4 percent in 2013. Ends

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MTN targets 2 million subscribers by end of year