By Telecom Lead Team: Following the introduction of
Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Ghana telecom market, market share of major
service providers has undergone significant changes.
Vodafone has overtaken Tigo as the second largest
operator in Ghana, according to results published by National Communication
Authority (NCA), at the end of November 2011.
Vodafone 4,179,824 subscribers representing 19.87 percent 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 percent.
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, according to a report in www.myjoyonline.com.
Between August and September, Tigo lost 157,574 subscribers down to 3,998,489,
while Vodafone gained 158,801 subscribers to reach 3,890,083.
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 last MNP result in Ghana indicate some 170,000 people have so far ported,
which is an insignificant 0.81 percent 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 favor 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 percent 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 percent
of the total. However, Airtel which is leading in the Indian market, is yet to
make significant headway in Ghana even after the introduction of MNP.
Market leader MTN has added on to its recently celebrated 10 million
subscribers to reach 10,053,479 subscribers representing 47.8 percent.
Meanwhile Glo is coming into the market from January 19, 2012 and has promised
to be aggressive, but some telecom CEOs have predicted there is not much
opportunity for Glo in a market which is almost saturated, except Glo focused
on data service.
