22 Facts About MTN Group

MTN Group Limited, formerly M-Cell, is a South African multinational mobile telecommunications company, operating in many African and Asian countries.

MTN Group is the primary sponsor of the South Africa national rugby union team and sponsors English football club Manchester United F C and Zambian super league.

In June 2008, MTN Group agreed to purchase Verizon Business South Africa, which was a provider of data services to customers in South Africa and four other African countries.

On 26 June 2009, MTN Group's subsidiary merged with Belgacom International Carrier Services, a subsidiary of Belgacom.

In October 2012, MTN Group announced a partnership with Afrihost to provide DSL Broadband services in Africa.

Related searches

In 2014, MTN Group was named on the 2014 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand rankings and named the Most Admired and Most Valuable Brand in Africa.

MTN Group retained its ranking as the Most Admired and the Most Valuable African brand in 2015.

In September 2019 MTN Group began closing stores in Nigeria and some of their stores in Johannesburg, South Africa due to rioting, looting, and attacks on some of their facilities.

MTN Group has stated that they will continue to do business in Nigeria.

In March 2019 MTN Group launched a WhatsApp channel to let its customers buy airtime and data bundles through the messaging app.

MTN Group sold its Cyprus branch to Monaco Telecom for €260 million in July 2018.

On October 30, 2020, MTN Group made public the sale of their shares in the e-commerce brand Jumia.

In February 2021, the MTN Group partnered with Mastercard to ensure safe and secure global e-commerce payments of their customer base in 16 African countries.

On 1 December 2011, MTN Group became the second cellular provider to introduce 4G and LTE in South Africa They were the first network operator in South Africa to launch a live public 5G network available in Johannesburg and Cape Town On 30 June 2020.

MTN Group acquired Investcom, mainly under the Areeba and Spacetel brands.

Since 2017, MTN Group is the primary sponsor of the South Africa national rugby union team.

MTN Group has been criticised for its activities in Iran's telecommunications sector.

UANI alleges that MTN Group technology is "enabling the Iranian government to locate and track individual cellphone users which it says is a violation of users' human rights".

MTN Group denied the allegations, saying that it complied with US sanctions against Iran.

In May 2013, Turkcell dropped its multibillion-dollar US lawsuit against MTN Group, citing a US Supreme Court ruling that hurt its case.

In 2015, the Nigerian subsidiary of MTN Group was fined by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria through the telecommunications regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission for partial compliance of regulatory guidelines to Mobile Network Operators to disconnect from their network, all improperly registered Subscribers Identification Modules (SIM).

In September 2021, MTN Group announced that it will close its zero-rated access to the popular social network Twitter.