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Affordable telephony for the masses
AFFORDABLE mobile telephony for South Africans - that's what Sifiso Dabengwa, managing director of MTN, has identified as the company's priority for the future.
"We have positioned ourselves as a provider of quality service to anyone that wants to enjoy the benefits of cellular technology. This can mean anything from the ability to receive calls to doing banking transactions via a handset," he says.
"One of our priorities is to make telecommunications accessible to as many people as possible. Right now, the biggest opportunities for MTN lie in the delivery of basic mobile telephone services although in the medium term we expect to see data services overtake this. We can have as many as 100 000 new subscribers per month joining our network and more than 80% of these use the pre-paid system.
"Cellular telephony is proving so popular that by the year 2004 we expect the number of mobile users to exceed those using fixed line telephones."
Dabengwa says data services are typically seen as a high-end resource for corporate users but that they can, in fact, be used to good effect across the board.
"Many people in poorer communities have to travel great distances in order to pay a bill and most of them do not have access to reliable transport. Using the latest mobile data services, they will be able to pay a municipal account, for example, simply by using their handsets. There is no need to travel to other locations to complete transactions.
"People are also able to use their phones to stay abreast of what's happening in the country by having updated sports scores, for example, beamed to their phone. They can even have the latest news headlines sent to them in this way. We are constantly looking at new ways to get information to people," he says.
According to Dabengwa, while the pre-paid system has been good for business, it does have a limitation.
"The bulk of our new customers are now on the pre-paid system but because there are no contracts involved, we don't know the person we are dealing with. For this reason, we have a sophisticated call centre which we encourage our subscribers to use. This allows us to maintain a good level of contact with subscribers and so better tailor our services to their wants and needs.
"We have more than 1.5-million active users on our network, which translates to around 44% market share," he says.
"Looking ahead, we believe that the quality of our network, competitive pricing and high level of service are the things that will set us apart from the competition. Cellular telephony is rapidly becoming a commodity and issues like price, quality and service are key differentiators," says Dabengwa.
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