Contrary to projections by some telecom CEO’s and top executives in Ghana that Mobile Number Portability (MNP) would not have any significant impact on the telecom market, a recent certified telecom market report indicates the structure has changed after the launch of MNP.
Results published by National Communication Authority (NCA), at the end of November 2011, indicate that Tigo’s years of being the second biggest operator in country has been brought to an end largely because they lost subscribers through MNP.
Meanwhile, Vodafone, which championed MNP and made no secret about how much they believed MNP would help them gain subscribers of other operators, have indeed proved that their belief in and investment into MNP was not a mistake.
The NCA’s report indicates Vodafone is now the second largest operator in Ghana by subscribers, with 4,179,824 subscribers representing 19.87% of the total of 21,037,793 subscribers, whiles long-time second position holder,
Tigo has been pushed to third place with 4,030,769 subscribers, representing 19.16%.
This means Vodafone now leads Tigo with as much as 149,055 subscribers.
In July last year, when MNP was launched, Tigo had 4,147,105 subscribers, while Vodafone had 3,577,563 subscribers.
One month into MNP, in August 2011, subscriber base at Tigo increased by only 8,918 to 4,156,063 and Vodafone also increased subscribers by 153,719 to 3,731,282.
But between August and September, Tigo actually lost 157,574 subscribers down to 3,998,489, whiles Vodafone further gained 158,801 subscribers to reach 3,890,083, closing in strongly on Tigo.
Industry watchers then predicted it was just a matter of time before Vodafone would take the second position from Tigo.
In October Tigo increased subscribers by 54,295 to reach 4,052,784, but that was not enough to prevent the prediction of industry watchers, as Vodafone came in strongly with 4,089,697 subscribers, which is 36,913 more than that of Tigo.
The November results is only a consolidation of a trend that begun from July since the launch of MNP.
At the time when Tigo and MTN said they were not perturbed by MNP because history showed that not more than two percent of subscribers ported in any country where MNP was implemented, Vodafone made it clear the numbers may be small, but those who port were usually high value customers.
The last MNP result in Ghana indicate some 170,000 people have so far ported, which is an insignificant 0.81% of subscribers; the numbers may be insignificant as Tigo and MTN predicted, but they are enough to have dealt a hard blow to Tigo and changed the market structure in favour of Vodafone.
Meanwhile, Expresso has continued in its consistent month-on-month losing spree since the beginning of 2011, and has now dropped to 191,779 subscribers, representing 0.91% market share.
Airtel also maintained its consistent month-on-month increase since the beginning of 2011 and reached 2,581,942 subscribers, representing 12.3% of the total.
Market leader MTN has added on to its recently celebrated 10 million subscribers to reach 10,053,479 subscribers representing 47.8%.
Meanwhile Glo is coming into the market from January 19, 2012 and has promised to be aggressive, but some telecom CEO’s have predicted there is not much opportunity for Glo in a market which is almost saturated, except Glo focused on data service.
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