Financial results include data sheets which show a number of important figures, such as average revenue per user (ARPU), subscriber numbers, and data revenue.
Postpaid customers are far superior to prepaid in terms of the income they bring in for mobile operators, and as such, the ARPU reflections for this subscriber base are an important measure of the company’s revenue from its contract customers.
MTN’s results include an oddity in the ARPU for its South African subscribers. Specifically, it includes separate ARPU figures for postpaid subscriber and for “postpaid (excluding telemetry)”.
Telemetry subscribers refer to SIMs which are used in various tracking, monitoring, and low-data devices, and for this reason, the average revenue per telemetry subscriber is relatively low.
It may be tempting to dismiss this as unimportant business jargon with no bearing on simple subscriber numbers, but it turns out that these telemetry numbers are very important to MTN’s growth claims.
By including its telemetry subscribers in its postpaid user base, MTN increases its contract customer base to seem competitive with other players like Vodacom.