telecom firms draw battle lines as race for subscribers hit again

The battle lines for subscribers have been drawn by local telecom services providers as the race for clients hits fever pitch. Innovation and offering cheap services seem to be part of the winning chip.

According to Ebenezer Asante, the MTN Rwanda chief executive officer, deploying low cost infrastructure could help boost these figures, especially attracting the rural folks to own phones "as services will be cheaper since telecoms will incur low costs," he said.

Asante, however, noted that though Rwanda has the lowest call rates in the region and Africa generally, the local telecom sector faces a big challenge in attracting the 'small' subscribers.

"We need creative solutions, innovative network deployment and different business models to be able to serve these customers (those in the lower bracket). It is important to understand that the same solutions that were used to serve the first two thirds may not be attractive to this group of customers," he explained.

October statistics from Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) show that the subscription rate is improving, with 63.7 per cent of the population having access to a mobile phone.

The figures, accounting for subscription recorded from January up to end of September, show that mobile telephone penetration increased from 5.9 million subscribers (55.1 per cent) in January to 6.7m or 63.7 per cent in September.

Pioneer telecom firm MTN still leads with 3,636,976 subscribers followed by Tigo at 2,099,807 subscribers, while Airtel had 973,000 subscribers.

But all the three telecom firms are upbeat that they will attract more subscribers. They argue that a new wave of applications and 'mash-ups' of services, driven by high-speed networks, social networking, online crowd sourcing and innovation, will help them achieve this target. Mobile phones are increasingly being used to carry out financial services, which has transformed the lives of the rural masses. They are also using different client-targeted promotions to entice subscribers.

source: allafrica.com