{"id":658590,"date":"2026-07-29T13:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=658590"},"modified":"2026-07-29T13:01:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:01:29","slug":"big-changes-at-mtns-enterprise-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/enterprise\/658590-big-changes-at-mtns-enterprise-division.html","title":{"rendered":"Big changes at MTN\u2019s enterprise division"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MTN Group is poised for a major shift in its enterprise and business-to-business division, where it is moving away from traditional mobile and voice services towards building network infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mazen Mrou\u00e9, CEO of MTN Group’s digital infrastructure, said that connectivity remained the foundation of MTN Business’s offering, but future growth is expected to come from other products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This included fixed connectivity, managed networks, cloud, cybersecurity, IoT, unified communications and collaboration, professional services, AI and data analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Businesses are increasingly procuring integrated technology solutions and business outcomes rather than standalone voice services or mobile subscriptions,” Mrou\u00e9 told MyBroadband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“MTN’s strategy is therefore to use its mobile and fixed-network assets as a gateway to higher-value, recurring ICT services that help customers digitise and modernise their operations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrou\u00e9 said the total addressable enterprise market is expected to increase from approximately R391 billion in 2025 to R639 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group’s new strategy is based on the establishment of two new data centre facilities in South Africa and Nigeria to meet market demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For data centres, our focus is on developing carrier-neutral, AI-ready digital infrastructure platforms in partnership with global, regional and local stakeholders,” said Mrou\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that MTN will lease its data centre capacity to other companies, potentially including competitors, as the group positions itself to become an infrastructure provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrou\u00e9 said that the data centre platforms are being designed around resilient power infrastructure and proximity to cable landing stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will connect with “extensive terrestrial and subsea fibre networks to support the evolving needs of cloud, enterprise and AI-enabled workloads,” said Mrou\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrou\u00e9 called this a key evolution in the strategy of MTN Business, to extend digital infrastructure beyond traditional connectivity to include distributed computing capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Through our investment in ODC, announced earlier this year alongside leading global technology and telecom companies, MTN is supporting the development of AI-native network infrastructure.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exploring AI-enabled computing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mrou\u00e9 said that, over time, MTN’s investments in fibre, data centres, cloud, and intelligent network infrastructure will lay the foundations for African digital and AI economies that it can market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are also participating in industry initiatives exploring how AI-enabled computing capabilities can be deployed closer to end users and enterprise applications,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond infrastructure, MTN Business has also applied AI internally to improve customer experience on its products and also improve operational efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Group chief technology officer Charles Molapisi revealed during the company’s Capital Markets Day event in June that MTN had deployed AI for maintenance purposes on its fibre network<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We lose a lot of service today because of fibre cuts. We have a lot of challenges in terms of excavation, road maintenance, and all of that,” said Molapisi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are now turning the fibre network into a sensor network, which means it actually observes the micro-vibrations on the network and picks up patterns.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new technology is able to detect when physical disruptions affect MTN’s fibre Internet network across its African markets using agentic AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Molapisi, the AI learned how the fibre network is supposed to behave, and when it begins to misbehave, it can alert technicians to connectivity fluctuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the technology would shorten the time required to diagnose and repair damage to the fibre network, which previously took about 8 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When people are mobilising, and before they put that TLB down to dig, we are already there to manage and support ourselves,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrou\u00e9 revealed previously that MTN expected its fibre footprint across Africa to expand significantly in the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN has planned to expand its fibre network to between 420,000km and 560,000km by 2030 as it targets 100 million new data customers in Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN is shifting its enterprise strategy from traditional mobile and voice services towards becoming an infrastructure provider for AI-focused businesses. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":653740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2082421131009470499","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57364],"tags":[27887,75200,22807,887,105871,785,11199],"class_list":["post-658590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise","tag-ai","tag-charles-molapisi","tag-data-centres","tag-fibre-1","tag-mazen-mroue-2","tag-mtn-business","tag-mtn-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658590"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660268,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658590\/revisions\/660268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}