MTN Ghana, telecoms market leader in the country, is causing a stir in the telecom ecosystem with a flyer hinting of a big announcement to be made by its CEO later today.
The flyer, which has the picture of the CEO, Selorm Adadevoh, with the inscription “Selorm’s got news!” has already set industry players wondering, while industry watchers and journalists go on a wild goose chase, trying to fish for details.
The flyer states “On Monday, August 10, MTN CEO, Selorm Adadevoh will share a special message with the public on all MTN Ghana Social Media pages – Tune in at 4pm.”
The information is scanty, but enough to put some shivers down the spine of competition.
It would be recalled that MTN Ghana was on June 12, 2020 declared a significant market player (SMP), by the National Communications Authority (NCA) as a measure to “correct the imbalance” in the telecom industry.
As market leader for more than a decade, MTN holds some 94% share of the mobile money market, and have held almost 75% share of voice, data and telecoms revenue for many years.
It is also estimated that about 70% of all calls in the country terminate on MTN, which means, when the interconnect reconciliation is done between the telcos and the regulator at the end of every month, every telco pays MTN, but MTN pays nobody.
So the regulator’s intervention, in naming MTN SMP, meant the regulator is now applying a set of anti-trust and anti-competition regulations to tame MTN in manner that does not harm the company but allows the other players to also grow.
One of such measures is for MTN to share some details of its strategies with the regulator so the other players will get a picture of the strategy ahead of implementation, so they can prepare for whatever shocks there would be.
But this flyer by MTN seem to create the impression the company is about to drop a market disruption package, and that makes competition uncomfortable.
It is also not clear if the regulator is aware or not, as MTN and the regulator are all tightlipped on the matter.
