Author: Gugu Lourie

MTN South Africa has spent more than R50 billion on upgrading its network infrastructure in the past five years. South Africa’s second-biggest operator has improved its Long Term Evolution (LTE) population coverage to over 96%. It is a standard for wireless data transmission that allows for faster downloads of your favourite music, websites, and videos. It is definitely much faster than the previous technology, 3G. LTE – sometimes referred to as 4G LTE – also offers less buffering and better streaming. MTN has rolled out low band LTE, which uses spectrum bands below 1GHz. This improves coverage and significantly improves the…

South Africa’s Telkom has published its 2020 integrated annual report, which shows the group’s ownership by geographical region. As of 31 March 2020, Telkom is 50.5% owned by institutional investors, 40.5% held by the Government of South Africa, 6.4% is owned by non-institutional investors, and the remaining 2.6% is held as treasury share. Broken down into geographical regions, Telkom’s ownership is as follows: South Africa – 44% United States of America – 37% United Kingdom – 9% Europe – 6% Rest of the world – 4% Despite South Africans owning 44% of the telco, foreigners seem to have an appetite for…

South Africa is finally seeing a glimmer of light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel and President Cyril Ramaphosa could announce eased lockdown restrictions later this week. Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize announced on Saturday that there are now a total of 553,188 cases of coronavirus in South Africa, reflecting an increase of 7,712 cases from the 545,476 infections reported previously. The data shows that there are 301 new COVID-19 related deaths, taking the total to 10,210 casualties. A steady decline in the infection rate and other critical indicators have raised hopes that the worst of the pandemic’s first…

Telkom boss Sipho Maseko’s total remuneration was reduced by R2 million in 2020 financial year to R21.8 million versus R23.2 million in 2019, according to the company’s latest annual report. Maseko took home guaranteed pay of R8.8 million and R10.5 million in vested shares. He also received R2.4 million in dividends on shares that weren’t vested. Telkom’s highest-paid executive was former chief financial officer Deon Fredericks, who retired as chief investment officer. He was paid a total of R26 million, including R16 million in vested shared and 5.7 million in severance pay. Fredericks was followed closely by Alphonzo Samuels, who…

As part of its plan to exit the Middle East, MTN is in talks to sell MTN Syria to TeleInvest, the operator disclosed on Thursday. “As part of this process, we are in advanced discussions to sell our 75% stake in MTN Syria to TeleInvest, which is the minority shareholder in MTN Syria with a 25% holding,” MTN said. “As part of the review of our portfolio, we believe the group is best served to focus on its pan-African strategy and to simplify its portfolio by exiting the Middle East region in an orderly manner over the medium term.” TeleInvest…

MTN sees value in its joint venture with SA’s third-biggest insurer Momentum Metropolitan. In 2017, Momentum Metropolitan and MTN launched aYo, a micro-insurance joint venture. It began its roll-out in Uganda in January 2017 and has also been deployed in Ghana and Zambia. At the end of June, our aYo insurance joint venture had 8,6 million registered policyholders, MTN informed investors on Thursday. “We have agreed to increase our shareholding in aYo to 75% and will consolidate it in the future,” MTN said. “aYo generated R48 million in service revenue in the first six months to end June, and continues…

MTN has added more new subscribers in the last six months as more people signed up for its mobile and data services amid the coronavirus pandemic. Africa and the Middle East biggest mobile phone company announced its subscribers increased by 10,6 million to 261,5 million for the six months ended 30 June 2020. The operators also reached a significant milestone in surpassing the 100 million mark of active data users. By end June 2020, MTN had 102 million active data users. It also recorded 38,3 million Mobile Money (MoMo) users and in Nigeria added 114 000 agents to reach 222…

MTN Group is selling its 75% stake in MTN Syria as part of its strategy to exit the Middle East in an orderly manner. The company informed investors on Thursday that it was focusing its strategy in future on the African markets: “As part of our ongoing portfolio review, we believe the group is best served to focus in the future on our pan-African strategy,” said Rob Shuter, MTN CEO. “We will therefore be exiting the Middle East in an orderly manner over the medium term. As a first step we are in advanced discussions to sell our 75% stake…

MultiChoice chief executive Calvo Mawela’s total remuneration was $649 000 (R11.3 million) in 2020, up by 3% compared with last year’s R10.6 million, according to the pay-TV’s operator’s annual report released today. Executive chairman Imtiaz Patel was paid $620 000 (R10.7 million) and CFO Tim Jacobs received R7.5 million. These amounts include base salary, pension, benefits, and short-term incentives. Patel and Mawela are paid in dollars, which is aligned with the MultiChoice Group Dubai-based contracts and considers Dubai’s cost of living and typical expatriate benefits for Dubai. The company said to focus significant time on the MultiChoice Rest of Africa…

South African Airways (SAA) has put an immediate stop to the spending of all Voyager Miles – even for non-air rewards. “The ability to earn Miles, through our various Voyager programme partners, will continue as normal,” SAA said in a note to Voyager Miles customers. The redemptions of miles will be paused for another month until 31 August 2020, said SAA. “You will therefore not be able to redeem your Miles for awards until after 31 August 2020”. SAA said it was aware that its members were eager to receive their membership credentials reflecting the new expiry date of their…