Over the last 20 months, growth in mobile Internet data subscription has overtaken that of voice, signalling a huge grey market for telecom operators to boost revenue, B&FT analysis has shown.

The National Communication Authority (NCA) has reported that mobile data subscription at the end of August this year was a little above 14.6 million, which is a 75% increase over the January 2013 figure of 8.3 million.

At the same time, mobile voice subscription witnessed a 13% growth, affirming predictions by industry watchers that mobile data market is the next frontier for network operators.

Currently, the NCA recorded that the number of mobile lines for voice calls has reached 29.5 million, which shows a penetration rate of 111% at a time the penetration rate of mobile data is pegged at 55%.

Additionally, on a month-on-month basis, growth in mobile data hovered around 5% while that of voice has been under 1%. This shows that while voice subscription is feared to have reached a saturation point, almost half of the estimated 26.5 million Ghanaian population does not have access to mobile Internet services -- making mobile data the best bet for telecom network operators to make money.

The GSM Association (GSMA) -- the worldwide umbrella-b ody of mobile network operators -- has predicted that mobile operators will make more money from data than voice by 2018.

The prediction is consistent with local operators’ decision to align their services toward enhancing user experience in data services, which has helped to increase mobile broadband penetration in the country.

According to the GSMA, which represents mobile operators and related companies devoted to supporting the standardising, deployment and promotion of the GSM mobile telephone system,the surge in connected devices and the growth of machine-to-machine communications is creating huge demand.

MTN -- which has seen its grip on the data market loosen from 67.4% in January 2013 to 53% at the end of August -- has seen its decision to make data key to its business growth going forward pay off last year, with an 82 percent increase in data revenue to 801 million rand (GH?189.9m),contributing 9.7 percent to the company’s total revenue in the country.

At the same time, the revenue that MTN makes through voice calls from each subscriber, otherwise referred to as Average Revenue Per User, reduced from GH?11.54 in first quarter of 2013 to GH?11.32 at the end of December that year.

MTN, in a bid to firm-up its control over the data market, has partnered a number of telecom vendors and manufacturers to bring into the market new entry-level smartphones as part of strategies to enable the company widen access to data services in the country.

Other telecom network operators are also aggressively rolling-out strategies that will ensure they maximise their earnings from the data segment, which so far have shown impressive results.

According to the NCA figures, five of the network operators at least maintained their data market share in August as compared to their share in July this year. Vodafone is the only operator to have seen a drop in its market share for the period, making it the third time that the network operator has consistently seen its market share dwindle.

The latest NCA data report shows that Vodafone has 14.15% market share, followed closely by Airtel with 14.14%. tiGO, the fourth-biggest operator in terms of subscriber numbers in the data market, controls 14.35% while Glo and Expresso have 4% and 0.25% share respectively.

The NCA -- conscious of the potential of the data market in the telecom space -- recently described the performance of mobile network operators in the data market as “fairly average”.

The NCA in reviewing the data market said: “Data subscription for year 2013 had an undulating projection, and so it can be said that performance of the mobile phone operators was fairly average”.

Growth in the mobile data market has been helped by the proliferation of cheap smartphones, which has helped to drive mobile data traffic to social media platforms and other Internet applications such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

At present many Ghanaians use phones, not PCs, to access the Internet because broadband connectivity is incredibly slow and the nation lacks a decent fixed-line network. And with the instability in the power sector, more people have turned their phones into home entertainment centres and are spending time on the smart phones, which is also driving data usage and revenue in the market.