Africa’s leading phone operator MTN Group has warned over intended tariff hike if the Nigerian government makes its license conditions more stringent due its expiry year.
According to the telecommunication’s officials, tougher rules, regulations and greater demands will impact price the more you charge up front or the more you demand over a period of time. The subscribers will be at the receiving end to pay.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) fined three major mobile operators for the quality of their service and prohibited them from selling new SIM cards in March with a financial penalty if offended.
The company’s services have come down in the past three years in Nigeria in which the company has spent about $5 billion to $6 billion in expanding capacity. With the upcoming government regulations, the telco feels that it will negatively affect investment yet they are already operating under strict conditions.
One of the major challenges faced by the company is cuts to its fiber-optic network which is often the case due to negligence as roads are constructed as well as malicious damage. Power interruptions are also a challenge MTN has hard to spend about N34 million on diesel to power base stations.
MTN is looking to grow revenue from data as the use of smartphones, tablets and TV’s increases in Africa’s most populous nation to offset a slowdown in the growth in subscription numbers.
