By 
By Oluwatobi Opusunju
Despite economic instability and rising OPEX, MTN Nigeria has continued to record increase in market revenue and share. The mobile network operator (MNO) recorded a 14.4 per cent increase in total revenue for Q1 2018.
The company plans to release full financial results this week.
The MNO’s rising revenue is marked by a data surge of 73.2% rise in revenue from data services.
According to a press statement issued by MTN’s Public Relations and Protocol Manager, Mr. Funso Aina, the MNO also recorded a year on year increase of 73.2% in revenue from data services with voice revenue put at only 15.2% for the period ended in March 2018.
These figures show that Nigeria is becoming more data centric underscored by the increase in Over The Top (OTT) services such as Whatsapp, Skype, and Viber. This indicates data services are beginning to be viewed more strategically than voice.
Also noteworthy is that a lot of companies have started investing in and deploying Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) enabled virtual call centers to lower the cost of corporate voice services.
Additionally, the telco recorded a quarter-on-quarter increase of 4.3 percent in subscriber base. The figure shows an addition of 2.3 million subscribers up from 52.2 million that was recorded in Q4 2017.
“MTN Nigeria delivered a strong performance for the first quarter of 2018, supported by growth in data revenue and increased scale. We also maintained positive momentum in growing our subscriber base and maintaining our network leadership position,” said CEO of MTN Nigeria, Ferdi Moolman in the statement.
