According to the quarterly market tracking report produced by Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), there was a net account addition of 590,000 mobile and fixed subscriptions in the period January to March 2021. This resulted in the overall growth of Total Revenue Earning Customers (REC) from 27.7 million in December 2020 to 28.3 million accounts at the end of March 2021.
Despite this growth marking the first time that total subscriptions have crossed the 28 million mark since the pre-COVID19 peak of March 2020, it also represents a 2% quarter-on-quarter growth, the lowest rate of growth recorded in the last two quarters. Nevertheless, this modest recovery in subscriptions puts Uganda at a phone penetration of almost Seven lines for every 10 individuals in the country.
On the other hand, broadband cellular subscriptions stood at 21.5 million in March 2021, including a net addition of 120,000 new subscriptions. While the quarterly net additions have not matched the more than 1 million subscriptions posted in the last quarter of 2020, this is still noteworthy growth given the internet and social media restrictions during the period, as well as the traditional network churns, which usually follow the end of year holidays.
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In the mobile network space, the highlight of the quarter was the award of the third National Telecom Operator license to Tangerine Ltd, trading as LycaMobile Uganda, on 24th March 2021. The provisional license permits LycaMobile to deploy national telecommunications infrastructure and provide licensed telecommunications services across all the regional license zones defined by the licensor.
Responding to concerns about expiring data, MTN Uganda became the first provider to launch non-expiring bundles under its flagship 4G Freedom at the end of the first quarter of 2021. This set the tone for an industry-wide review of bundle validity terms, as Smile Telecom introduced its Data King Bundle of 115 GBs while LycaMobile maintained its flagship 100 GB and 50 GB bundles.
Meanwhile, mobile financial services continued to grow, especially in Africa, propelled in part by travel restrictions and other COVID19 fighting measures. At the end of March 2021, total mobile money accounts on the continent had grown to 562 million, translating into a penetration of 40 lines per 100 inhabitants.
The total number of active accounts had grown to 160 million, translating into an account activity ratio of almost 30%, with Vodafone, MTN, and Airtel jointly accounting for more than 50% of this account base. The growth in the mobile money business has been so significant that by March 2021 MTN, Airtel, and Vodafone mobile money outfits were valued at almost USD 20 billion.
To streamline this growing service in Uganda, the telecom giants MTN and Airtel were issued with a no objection to separate their digital finance business (mobile money) from the cellular network operations. “These no objections are in partial fulfillment of new regulatory obligations instituted by the National Payments Systems Act 2020 and the Uganda Communications Pricing and Accounting Regulations 2019,” the report stated.
Still on mobile money, following a clean-up of mobile network operators’ account registers, the number of active mobile money accounts was revised downwards, from 22.5 million to 20.3 million at the end of March 2021. This represents 66% of the 30.5 million registered mobile money accounts. The 66% active accounts amount to double the African average of 30% account activity. On a year-on-year comparison, more than 5 million new accounts were registered between March 2020 and March 2021. This growth was largely fueled by significant fee waivers, increased merchant acceptance, and limited movements at the height of the pandemic.
As a whole, the telecommunications industry yet again posted quarterly gross revenues over and above the 1 trillion mark, with UGX 1.12 trillion recorded between January and March 2021. This reflects a 7% increase in gross revenue compared to the first quarter of 2020 when revenues stood at UGX 1.05 trillion. In terms of quarter-on-quarter comparison, industry revenues dropped by UGX 20 billion from the previous record quarterly performance of UGX 1.14 trillion in December 2020 to UGX 1.12 trillion in March 2021.
Global data telecom scene
On the global scene, with remote working and social distancing continuing to define the “new normal”, the period under review saw increased digitization and use of social media. Facebook reported an active account base of 2.74 billion users, closely followed by 2.3 billion YouTube accounts. It could therefore be implied that nearly 4 out of every 10 persons globally have a social media account.
As for peer-to-peer messaging applications, WhatsApp posted 2 billion active users while Asian chat powerhouse WeChat/Weixin reported an estimated 1.2 billion active users at the end of March 2021.
On the other hand, image and video sharing applications such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snap Chat reported a combined user base of 2.4 billion accounts at the end of the same period. The quarter also witnessed growing subscriptions for new kid on the block Clubhouse, an audio chat social media application launched at the peak of COVID19 lockdowns. Clubhouse’s active accounts had grown to more than 2 million by the end of March 2021.
Meanwhile, Zoom and Microsoft Teams (MS) Teams continued to dominate the remote working market, accounting for 445 million active accounts. In terms of users, Microsoft Teams posted 145 million daily active users in 1Q21 compared to Zoom’s estimated 300 million.
