MTN released subscriber numbers around lunchtime here

MTN released subscriber numbers around lunchtime here. Although, I can tell you that lunchtime here is about as exciting as low level solitaire, there is leaving the desk to make for the kitchen, but then straight back. What passes for culinary excellence on this side is a gourmet sarmie made in-house. Sorry, we are boring. Although Byron made a monster sandwich yesterday filled with all sorts of goodies.



But who care about our lunch, I care about the MTN subscriber numbers, that is something you can really get your teeth into. So, instead of blurting out what they said in the release, I hacked their subscriber number table and made it better. I think that the JSE SENS publishing system is awful. Here goes, MTN subscriber numbers table, Nigeria is still comfortably tops with 36.8 million subscribers:

See the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd places by region. Notice that guys? West and Central Africa account for 46 percent of the overall subscriber base. And then North Africa and the Middle East, that region accounts for around one third of the overall 134,7 million subscribers. And then our region, South and East Africa accounts for only 22 percent of the overall subscriber base. I have tried to be cute and add in the gold, silver and bronze. Although to be honest I think that we should start awarding Rhodium, Platinum and Gold medals for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd places.



The biggest markets in each region are perhaps too important, Iran accounts for two thirds of the overall region, and is now comfortably ahead of South Africa as MTN's second biggest subscriber base. Ghana saw a fall off in subscriber numbers "following the implementation of SIM registration on 1 July 2010. The impact of the new requirements initially lowered gross connections resulting in net negative subscriber growth in July and August which started to normalize in September 2010." I must admit, I really like Ghana, the country, not too excited about the Black stars, but the country. Smart, stable, making progress and they take themselves seriously.



But it is not just about the subscriber numbers, more importantly there are the ARPU numbers, say it: "Arrhhhhpoooohh". Average Revenue per user. As you can imagine as you get more folks on the network, the ARPU's are going to decline, that is just the way it goes, the more users you add, the more likely they are marginal ones.

Did you see that I stuck in the South African ARPU numbers in Dollar terms, just so that you can get a sense of comparing all the geographies that MTN operate in. And it certainly makes for fun reading when comparing the Dollar ARPU's. The post paid environment in South Africa has the highest ARPU's for MTN, which makes sense, this is their longest standing and oldest market and the contract users in South Africa (all 3.2 million users) are pretty well to do relative to the rest of the users. And in fact better than the Cyprus business.



But this is the challenge you see, as economies grow across our continent, we would expect to see higher ARPU's over time. Of course there are serious political risks that remain in Nigeria and Iran, I guess more so Iran you would say. Although the posturing has been less chest puffing out lately and more focus on domestic matters by the developed world. I would say on balance that these subscriber and ARPU numbers were good, only 4.1 percent quarter on quarter growth I hear you say. I guess then we should look for the year to close out at about 140 million subscribers, that is around 24 million more subscribers than as at December 2009. Now that is impressive when you say it like that. The two cogs that are still "missing" in the big machine are Egypt and Kenya. Darn it would have been "nice" to have seen them get some parts of Orascom.