Mascom set to flex its muscles
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday January 24, 2020 15:51
The mobile carrier’s plan to be the ‘preferred service provider’ involves wooing away customer numbers from the other players in the market by bringing all needs under one roof.
Botswana has one of the world’s highest mobile phone densities due in part to declining costs of devices, as well as users’ tendency to subscribe across all three providers in search of services, quality and cost.
At the last count in March 2019, Mascom accounted for 50% of the 3.4 million mobile subscriptions in the country. With the voice market reportedly reaching saturation level, Mascom appears to be looking at its rivals for numbers.
“The high mobile density in Botswana indicates that many consumers still see the need for having multiple SIMs, often for different services,” Mascom CEO, Dzene Makhwade-Seboni said on Tuesday.
“This in itself is not unique to Botswana. “It calls upon us to strive to be the preferred service provider because the customer will have more use for the provider who meets most of their needs. “The idea is for the consumer to say ‘I need the one that has everything for me’.
They should be thinking that even if they have the others, ‘that one is the one I do most of my business on. That’s my main number’”.
In a wide-ranging interview with BusinessWeek, Makhwade-Seboni, who took over as substantive Mascom CEO in November, laid out a plan for greater market domination by the mobile carrier.
The plan includes heavy spend on infrastructure, devices, the roll-out of more services and the cutting of costs at every opportunity, particularly in the area of data. It also includes intensive consumer education to create the demand for new products and services.
Makhwade-Seboni’s number one priority as she begins her first year at the helm, is “on consolidating our leadership position and remaining the leading digital services provider of choice”.
“We are committed to making the necessary investments in infrastructure, new technologies and solutions as we believe that this is where our future growth will come from,” the CEO said.
“Ensuring the right level of investment is a strategic priority.
“Mascom has made significant investments in preparing our network and business systems for upcoming business directions.”
One of these business directions involves a push to overtake Orange Money as the country’s premier mobile money service. Mascom’s MyZaka at about 398,000 subscribers trails Orange Money’s 752,000 subscribers despite the two services having been launched weeks apart in June 2011. Mobile money is the only aspect of the sector where Mascom is not in the lead. The group plans to launch MyZaka’s international money transfer within months, removing one of the last advantages Orange Money has been having over the smaller service.
“We introduced the MyZaka card, which is also a ‘tap and go’ last year and that was a big step towards getting more customers,” Makhwade-Seboni said.
“The important thing is the services and the availability of MyZaka. That’s a critical part of working to make it used more.
“With these types of services, you want it on every street corner and access through agents everywhere.
“With the card and the money transfer, for this year, we are definitely pushing and we are very optimistic about MyZaka’s performance.
“We have already started to see a difference and when the latest data comes out you will see that we have made significant strides.”
Mascom also has a plan for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), the service dreaded by market leading mobile carriers worldwide. MNP allows mobile phone subscribers to change network providers without changing their numbers. In other markets, the service has resulted in migration from the market leading mobile carrier to smaller players, as it removes the fear of losing one’s number when moving to another carrier.
Makhwade-Seboni said Mascom not only welcomed MNP in the interests of competition and benefits to consumers, but also believed it should be extended to fixed telephony. While the licences issued to all mobile carriers in the country allow them to also provide fixed telephony services, BTC Limited enjoys a full monopoly on the market dating back to the introduction of telecommunications in the country.
“There’s no reason why MNP cannot expand to fixed land lines because we have the licences that allow us to do that.
“If the intention is to benefit consumers and give them a choice, you can give them that choice in both mobile and fixed and there’s nothing preventing that.
“Everybody can take the challenge to BTC and it becomes a level playing field.
“The ultimate winner should be the consumer, if we want to do this correctly,” the CEO told BusinessWeek.
Government last year announced MNP would start in April 2020 and BTC Mobile, the smallest mobile carrier, expects the service could boost its subscribers by 30%.