Fast Exhausting Data Speed And MTN’s Value, More Than All Nigerian Banks. But To Survive,They Must Look Unto The Sky
The Oasis Reporters
July 1, 2024
The telecommunications giant, MTN Nigeria that came in on the back of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s liberalization deal on the sector from it’s lowly 3rd position in it’s native South Africa is now more valuable than all Nigerian Banks, Insurance Companies combined, market valuation data has revealed.
It is worth above N5 trillion making it more valuable than all banks, insurance companies, and the entire financial services companies as at May 2022. But it now has an Achilles heel in the fast evolving sector.
In it’s native South Africa, it was trailing very badly as the third telecommunications network with little hope of catching up with Vodacom or Orange Telecommunications because South Africa may be a vast country with a buoyant economy, yet as at twenty years ago, the population of the country was less than 45 million.
But time and chance happened to MTN.
Growth dream killers in Nigeria represented by military dictators were in power in the country. During the brutal regime of General Sani Abacha’s military dictatorship and his unprecedented crackdown on pro democracy activists and the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo and others, Abacha suddenly died. His dreams and plans of opening up the telecommunications sector only under his family name died with him.
A freed Olusegun Obasanjo left prison in in less than ten months and became Nigeria’s president. With him came a free market economy and a true and open liberalization of the Telecommunications sector.
MTN as well as Econet wireless jumped into Nigeria from Southern Africa. MTN from South Africa and Econet Wireless from Zimbabwe.
Nigeria with a population of 120 million citizens was the virgin market MTN explored maximally to change it’s fortunes and figures by becoming the number one telecommunications firm in Africa, leaving it’s South African rival, Vodacom far behind. Vodacom was initially courted and begged to come to Nigeria. It’s myopic nose wrongly smelt hardship, but MTN smelled the aroma of opportunities beyond the seeming difficulties.
That is their story.
To show how valuable it is in Nigeria, it is listed on the nation’s Stock Exchange.
The hefty weight of the MTN stock is being buffeted by the management of the Nigerian economy and the inflation ravaging every sector. This is the reason a big user of data would notice that though cost of data may not have changed, but the data a blogger for instance believed would last him or her for about a month, now gets exhausted within two days of use.
Blame inflation.
But this is where the Achilles’s heels story starts.
A born South African engineer moved to the United States of America and was fast tracked into becoming a citizen. Ask him how he knew what he knows, he’d say he reads “books”. With a very fertile brain and bold imagination, Elon Musk started launching Space Shuttles, far cheaper than NASA that has taken man to space.
Well, Elon Musk has also been launching his SpaceX’s Starlink satellites telecommunications network which is also there in the package. So he builds the unrivaled SpaceX Starlink satellites all over the orbit.
With 440,000 naira only, a Nigerian can have it’s hardware. Throw in about 38,000 naira for data every month, there’s available unlimited data for the subscriber. The icing on the cake is that you can share the data with as many as perhaps 40 people through WiFi. That’s a sweet deal. Even though the initial capital outlay may be huge.
Comcast telecommunications is jumping in fast to partner with Starlink and offer services to it’s customers as an end-user market vendor. So when the deal sails, you can buy satellite data from Comcast Communications.
Talk about flying on the wings of Starlink.
With rising cost of data from the telecommunications giants in Nigeria today earning stock prices in trillions, they now have real competition.
Which is ultimately cheaper now?
MTN data (including other networks), or SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Data from Elon Musk?
Figure it out.
Ultimately, the likes of MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9mobile must figure a way out to look unto Space shuttles, if they must remain amongst the big teams in the competition. Being self smug with trillions of naira stocks is no longer the game. The game has changed.
Moreso as the big announcement has come from the giant Amazon. They hope to get into the Satellite communications game as of early 2025.
And only those that read books like Elon Musk and act the play in the books can be on the dance floor with enormous twists and turns of the wriggle.
Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
