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MTN to Offer African Roaming
(19 Nov 2008, BWCS Staff)Pan African mobile operator MTN Group says it will introduce seamless roaming across all of its 21 companies operating in Africa and the Middle East. The system should be working by the end of the first half of 2009, a company statement said. The new service, to be dubbed One World, will allow MTN subscribers to receive free incoming calls while using the participating networks. According to the company calls made on other MTN networks will be charged at local mobile rates.
MTN's main rival, Zain already offers a similar service and yesterday another rival Millicom International Cellular announced that it had won a mobile licence in Rwanda to bring its total in Africa to eight.
The MTN move follows the successful commercial launch of a roaming service covering three of its major markets: Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. Benin is scheduled to launch before the end of November. MTN's seamless roaming allows prepaid subscribers travelling between participating countries to recharge or top up their accounts using airtime vouchers from the visited country. The free incoming calls and local calling rates have also been extended to the postpaid subscriber base.
MTN's largest market is Nigeria where its customer base grew by 7% during the three months to the end of December 2007 to reach 14.99 million customers. However, the largest increases in its African subscriber numbers came in Ghana and Cameroon where its customer bases soared by 14% and 15% respectively during the three month period.
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