Mobile subscriptions in Rwanda increased by 15.5 percent in the second quarter of 2024, reaching 13.5 million from 11.7 million SIM cards recorded at the end of June 2023.

This is according to a report released by the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority, (RURA), which indicates that the growth in subscriptions led to a rise in active mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions per one hundred individuals, increasing from 87.4 per cent in June 2023 to 98.7 per cent in June 2024.

The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Rwanda, Mapula Bodibe, said MTN's increase in active subscribers can be attributed to a number of initiatives.

"We had significant expansion of our network coverage in the first half of this year, where we rolled out 114 sites," Bodibe told the New Times, adding that the growth of the telecom’s mobile money services also attracted new subscribers.

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The report however shows that in Q2 2024, the market share for Airtel Rwanda, measured by active SIM cards, increased by 0.8 percentage points to 39.9 per cent, while that of MTN Rwanda declined by the same margin to 61.1 per cent, compared to the same period last year.

Explaining the market share decline, Bodibe said, "The slight decline was due to the increase in customers with more than one operator SIM card (multi-simmers)."

Mobile Money

According to RURA, active mobile money subscriptions increased by 20 per cent with a total of 7.5 million SIM cards making use of any mobile service as at June 2024, compared to 6.3 million in the same period last year.

At the same time, the data shows that the proportion of active mobile money accounts per 100 inhabitants increased by 8.3 percentage points, rising to 55.5 per cent from 47.2 per cent as of June 2023.

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MTN&039;s market share for active mobile money subscriptions decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 79.9 per cent from 81.2 per cent in June 2023.

Airtel Rwanda on the other hand saw a corresponding increase of 1.3 percentage points in its market share, reaching 20.1 per cent as compared to 18.8 per cent in June 2023.

MTN Rwanda cited the increase in multi-simming as the main reason for the decline in their mobile money services market share, a trend they are hopeful will change.

Mobile Termination Rates

In August 2023, RURA implemented a directive to cut local mobile termination rates (MTR) to zero, for a period of one year.

The MTR is the fee one network operator charges another for connecting a call to a user on its network. Mobile termination rates play a critical role in ensuring the smooth operation of mobile networks.

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The zero-rating of the MTR had a significant impact on MTN's business.

"We experienced a significant decline in our voice revenues, with our local interconnect revenues suddenly dropping to zero following the regulatory directive, " Bodibe said, adding that the network also experienced an increase in off-net incoming calls, resulting in high costs of carrying the additional traffic, without the reciprocal revenues.

"Additionally, we have experienced an increase in our interconnect costs whereby the increased off-net traffic has resulted in an exponential increase in calls to subscribers outside of Rwanda, which comes with an increase in costs owed to our roaming partners and operators in the neighbouring countries," Mapula said.

Information from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, (OECD), shows that lower MTRs are favourable in encouraging competition and innovation, allowing network operators to develop business models which are less dependent on voice services.