Charles Molapisi - Afrikan Heroes

From Telco to TechCo: MTN Group Announces Two New Executive Appointments

September 9, 2022

Africa’s largest telecoms company, MTN Group, today announced a review of its executive structure as the company gears up to deliver on its Ambition 2025 strategy to transform from a Telco to a TechCo.

In line with this strategic shift, the company has appointed Ernst Fonternel into the role of Chief Consumer Officer and Divyesh Joshi into the role of Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer. Both appointments were recruited internally and are effective 1 October.

The new executive structure also sees the introduction of two new roles including that of Chief Commercial Operations Officer and Chief Risk Officer. Active recruiting for these positions is currently underway.

“The current top-tier structure has been optimal to enable us to evolve and grow the business to where we are today. However, in pursuit of Ambition 2025, the current structure needed to be optimised to adequately support our strategic ambition,” says MTN SA CEO, Charles Molapisi.

“I am pleased to announce the appointments of Ernst and Divyesh, both of whom are internal appointments who bring a wealth of knowledge to these roles.”

Fonternel, an industry veteran according to the company, has served for well over 20 years in the telecommunication industry, most of which has been at MTN SA.

He has strong commercial depth with a solid understanding of the SA mobile business models and distributors and currently leads the Digital and Online portfolios as Chief Digital officer within the MTN SA business.

Fonternel previously served as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at MTN Zambia during 2009 to 2012, successfully growing market share and revenue for that business.

He also held the position of CMO in MTN Uganda, where he helped to reposition MTN as the provider of choice in the Ugandan market. He holds a B. Comm. (Accountancy) qualification from the University of Johannesburg.

Having spent many years in the business serving in various leadership roles within the finance business, including acting as interim MTN SA CFO during 2020 Joshi is a dynamic and highly experienced leader with deep understanding of the telco industry.

He has a strong track record of building and integrating finance functions, solving complex business problems through strong business partnering, leading the delivery of significant business transactions, and providing key financial insights to support commercial decision making.

Joshi currently holds the position of General Manager responsible for Finance Digital Transformation and is a qualified CA (SA) and holds a M.Comm (Taxation) from the University of Pretoria.

Molapisi explains that these appointments and the recruitment for the new roles are designed to deliver agile ways of work to simplify cross-functional interfaces, enhancing our focus on key and new revenue streams, and better aligning commercial and support functions and focused sales and distribution structures.

The introduction of the Chief Commercial Operations Officer provides an elevated focus on Brand and Marketing, Customer Service Operations, Sales and Distribution, Regional Operations and Digital Online.

As telcos move towards delayering and greater verticalisation of business units, the risk function requires particular industry depth. The risk function requires a thorough telco consideration from finance, pricing, commercial partnerships, network, and IT perspective.

We’ve also considered how we can improve our speed to market with fewer layers and evolution of our platform-play as we deliver on Ambition 2025. Finally, we looked at how we can best drive transformation through convergence in the Network and IT environments.

“The fast-paced world of telecommunications and technology requires an agile, responsive, and pioneering leadership approach. To this end, our focus has been on defining, designing, and shaping a future-fit leadership model for MTN SA, leveraging the extensive experience and expertise within the senior leadership team,” concludes Molapisi.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

MTN to Launch OpenRAN Network in Africa

June 20, 2021

Africa’s largest telecoms network, MTN Group is leveraging its expansive footprint across the continent to test and ultimately deploy OpenRAN – an innovative technology that will enable it to launch new services more quickly, cost-effectively and seamlessly, supporting future strategies in line with the company’s Ambition 2025: Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.

The telco plans to modernise its radio access networks using OpenRAN. This is in line with one of five vital enablers of MTN’s strategy: to build technology platforms that the company believes are second to none, thereby allowing for the rapid expansion of 4G and 5G population coverage across its markets.

With up-to-date technology, MTN expects a reduction in its power consumption and associated carbon emissions. This, in turn, supports its plans to decarbonise its network and achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, MTN’s Project Zero.

OpenRAN allows for the disaggregation of hardware and software elements of a network, enabling telcos to build a network using components with the same specifications and scale from a diverse base of vendors. This disruptive trend is gaining popularity as the industry seeks to promote an open and interoperable ecosystem between various vendors.

MTN says it aims to roll this out by the end of 2021 in collaboration with its partners Altiostar, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, TechMahindra and Voyage.

As an early adopter, MTN first rolled out open-source technology in 2019 to improve rural coverage. MTN says that this was in line with its belief that everyone deserves the benefits of modern connected life.

To date, MTN has deployed over 1100 commercial sites in more than 11 countries and were among the pioneers of open-source adoption, facilitating cost-effective deployment in unconnected areas.

For all mobile network operators, radio access network (RAN) make up the bulk of capital and operating costs. By applying OpenRAN, MTN targets further innovation and cost efficiencies.

“At MTN we are alive to the potential of open interfaces. There is a lot of value that dominant players bring to the business, but telecommunications today is as much about the stability of the network as it is about new services,” says MTN Group CTIO Charles Molapisi.

“Customers measure us against the speed with which we can deploy the latest technology and we are committed to finding faster and better ways to do that.”

The many benefits of OpenRAN include diversifying the vendor landscape, disrupting the cost flow, and removing dependencies on proprietary suppliers.

The new technology also promises cost savings and flexibility as it allows operators to use generic hardware and open interfaces. It enables a so-called ‘Lego architecture’ where many different vendors supply the components and software products that together make the end-to-end radio network work. By modernising the network, MTN hopes to reduce its power consumption and emissions in support of Project Zero.

“While OpenRAN brings a new architecture to mobile networks and more suppliers to deal with, it gives telcos much-needed flexibility,” says Amith Maharaj, MTN Group Executive: Network Planning and Design.

“This means that MTN can now look at building a network that can meet cost and capacity requirements of specific markets, or even rapidly deploy 5G and/or 4G seamlessly with existing legacy services. This is a real game-changer for mobile advancement in emerging markets.”

While the technology is still in its early days and widespread adoption is likely years away, MTN has already collaborated with a number of global players to reap the benefits and trigger innovation. In efforts to drive OpenRAN standardisation, MTN says it is also participating in Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project.

“Early adoption gives us the ability to improve and deploy appropriate network architecture underpinned by technology, both tried and tested, and disruptive, to ensure we continue to deliver an exceptional experience, and ultimately play our part in harnessing the power of technology to lead digital solutions for Africa’s progress,” concludes Molapisi.