Tunisia’s telecom market revenues rose by 5.2 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2018 to reach TND 730 million, according to the latest figures from regulatory authority INT. The growth was supported by the ongoing strong performance in the fixed data (+25.3%) and mobile data (+14.6%) segments, based on revenues of TND 120.1 million and TND 172.7 million respectively. Mobile telephony still accounts for the largest share of revenues, at TND 338.6 million, and fell by 1.8 percent year-on-year.
MVNO Lycamobile showed the strongest growth, more than doubling its revenues on an annual basis to TND 3.2 million. Tunisie Telecom remains the biggest player with revenues of TND 281 million, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier. Ooredoo Tunisia was the only operator to show an annual decline in revenues, down 1.8 percent to TND 253.8 million.
The number of active mobile connections rose by 3.1 percent on an annual basis while falling 1.9 percent versus Q3 to reach 14.77 million. Ooredoo was the leading mobile operator with a customer base of 6.012 million, up by nearly 300,000 from the end of 2017, while Tunisie Telecom closed the fourth quarter with 4.590 million connections, up by almost 200,000 over the year. Orange’s mobile base stood at 3.966 million, after adding 216,000 lines during the year. Lycamobile saw the number of connections decline to 204,000 from 471,000 a year earlier.
The report also shows a steady increase in penetration of fixed and internet services in Tunisia. At the end of 2018, 34.5 percent of households had a fixed data connection, up from 28.0 percent a year earlier, and 43.4 percent subscriber to fixed telephony, versus 37.9 percent at the end of 2017.
Mobile data penetration rose to 75.8 percent of the population from 65.2 percent a year earlier, equal to 8.8 million mobile internet users. The data traffic over smartphones and USB modems ncreased to 67,956 TB in Q4 from 50,265 TB a year earlier, equal to annual growth of 35.2 percent. Growth in both mobile data penetration and traffic came to a halt in Q4 compared to Q3 2018.
Source: https://www.telecompaper.com/news/tunisia-telecom-market-revenues-up-52-percent-in-q4--1297054