MTN: Rapidly Expanding in a Major Growth Area
Launched in 1994, MTN South Africa has approximately 11 million subscribers. MTN’s GSM network is one of the largest in the world, with approximately 4000 sites covering 19,200 km of road, 900,000 square kilometers of land and providing access to 94.5% of South Africa's population.
MTN is passionate about enhancing the lives of its customers through innovative use of technology, and views data communications as the major growth area into the future.
MTN is part of the MTN multinational telecommunications group, one of the world’s largest emerging market players in telecommunications and the leader in Africa and the Middle East, operating mobile networks in 21 countries, covering a population of nearly a half billion people and serving in excess of 28 million subscribers.
The Need: To Jump-Start MMS Usage
Frustrated with the underwhelming consumer response to their MMS service offering nearly a year after deployment, MTN wanted to dramatically boost MMS usage.
Challenge: To Boost User Subscriptions and MMS Traffic
Comverse is not the first MMS vendor at MTN. At the end of 2002, the mobile operator introduced MMS services via another firm; however, within a few months, that vendor discontinued the offering.
Based on technical and commercial criteria, MTN selected Comverse MMSC in March 2003, and the system was fully deployed within a matter of months.
“The technical assistance provided by Comverse during the delivery and implementation phases was very good, and we maintained a solid working relationship with the company from the outset. The company also provided marketing assistance through an effective workshop format,” says Brian Seligman, MTN Senior Marketing Manager – Products and Solutions, adding that MTN already had deployed the Comverse Voicemail service for several years with very positive results.
Comverse’s two-pronged solution was to meet MTN’s ambitious usage goals by realizing more of the potential of both person-to-person (P2P) messaging and application-to-person (A2P) messaging.
The Solution: Comverse MMSC
MTS deployed the Comverse high-capacity MMSC solution, which efficiently handles both P2P and highvolume A2P multimedia applications.
Choosing an MMSC: Technical Excellence and Best-Practice Marketing Support
MTN chose Comverse because it understood that simply offering MMS service is not enough to guarantee real market success. MMS success is earned by applying proven technical and marketing approaches appropriate for local conditions.
Comverse is renowned not only for technical excellence, but also for best-practice marketing support drawn from extensive experience around the globe.
Results: MMS Usage Soars
Boosting Person-to-Person (P2P) Messaging:
One element of the Comverse solution for MTN was to boost P2P MMS usage. The problem of getting customers started was solved by measures including:
- MMS Promotion: Campaigns piqued interest in the service, promoting the use of MMS and additionally promoting the adoption of new handsets. MTN’s promotional effort was reinforced by mass advertising campaigns conducted by handset vendors publicizing the multimedia functionality of their new camera phones.
- Self-Provisioning: Comverse MMSC’s automatic self-provisioning on first use, with no activation process by customer care, made it easy for subscribers to start using the service. MTN benefited from quick enrolment without needing to increase the customer care staff.
- Over-The-Air (OTA) Handset Configuration: Comverse MMSC’s pro-active handset configuration enabled MTN to reach mass user penetration at minimal cost.
- MMBox: MMBox extended MMS availability and usability to the Internet, making MMS messaging easier and more fun with attractive content to compose creative messages from the Web.
As part of the promotion of P2P services, MTN embarked on an SMS campaign for legacy handset support.
“A full 100% of our subscribers can benefit from MMS, due to our legacy handset support through the MTN-ICE portal,” Seligman says. “Because Comverse MMSC provides legacy subscriber support via the Web, we focused not only on MMS-enabled users, but also on legacy subscribers with Internet access.”
Boosting Application-to-Person Messaging:
MMS A2P is an important growth engine in the MMS market, with the majority of MMS revenues forecast to come from entertainment and information services.
Comverse MMSC enabled MTN to launch A2P MMS services, and the revenue-generating power of A2P was rapidly demonstrated.
Their first application, a traffic monitoring service for South Africa’s busiest intersections, enables road users to receive on their handsets pictures of current road traffic at key points. This application quickly proved extremely successful, contributing more than 30% of the daily MMS traffic, and is now part of the daily routine of MTN commuters, helping them make smart decisions on their travel timing and route.
Another successful application took advantage of the Christmas holiday and vacation season, sending pictures showing conditions on popular beaches to help vacationers plan where to go.
The substantial messaging traffic created by these services demonstrated that well-targeted MMS applications have a strong business case in the MTN market.
Mission Accomplished
MMS usage at MTN soared, and continues to increase at a healthy rate.
“MMS has tremendous potential for us,” says Seligman, “Within a short time after deploying the Comverse MMSC, we increased message traffic by more than thirteen-fold, from 30,000 to 400,000 a month. With the number of MMS-compliant handsets increasing, we expect our acquisition and usage generation only to get better, and foresee a rapid return on investment.”
New applications, such as MMS news services, gaming, and other future services, are being readied for release by MTN. MMS applications are developed easily within the Comverse MMSC SDK development environment, and quick deployment of new services
is assured by Comverse MMSC.
“From our point of view, the project was a complete success. Since the launch of the Comverse MMSC we have seen a dramatic increase here in both user subscriptions and message traffic. Within only a few weeks of the Comverse MMSC launch there were
over 5 times more registered users,” Seligman observed. Sending MMS messages to and from the Web has also proved to be an important element in the increase in usage.
“Comverse automatic activation of any subscriber with an MMS handset created a much improved situation wherein subscribers no longer had to be proactive in activating their handsets. This auto-provisioning led to a rapid ramp-up of users and traffic in a short time period. These new and enthusiastic users created record traffic with an average of 30 messages per month per subscriber.”
Additional revenue comes from:
- MTN ICE (the Comverse MMBOX), a mobile portal that the user is able to access via a mobile device. MTN ICE is the largest mobile portal in South Africa.
- Major MMS traffic is derived from MMS-to-Email and the Web interface, enabling legacy handset users to send multimedia content.