Mobile operator MTN South Africa has gained some ground in winning back customers during the quarter to September 30 after a delayed reaction to the price war last year saw the JSE-listed group fall behind its rivals.

The group’s South African operation added 1.4-million net subscribers during the third quarter – a 5.7% hike on the prior quarter – bringing its local customer base to 26.7-million.

During the first quarter of 2014, the local operation’s subscriber base contracted by 825 000 subscribers, offset by the addition of 394 000 subscribers during the second quarter, to reach 25.3-million subscribers by the end of June.

By the end of July, another 400 000 subscribers were added, indicating a recovery at MTN South Africa.

In August, the group had downgraded its subscriber additions guidance for MTN South Africa for the full year from 2-million to 1.5-million, as the local unit continued to battle intense competition, but had now reverted back to a guidance of two-million subscriber additions for the year.

MTN Group president and CEO Sifiso Dabengwa commented that the local operations showed good progress from the first half of the year after an aggressive roll-out of promotions and offers led to the prepaid subscriber base jumping 7.1% to 21.2-million.

The postpaid segment also delivered a satisfactory performance and grew its subscribers marginally to 5.5-million.

The number of data subscribers increased to 16.1-million and data usage rose 55.9% during the third quarter of the year.

“MTN [as a group] reported encouraging results for the third quarter, delivering subscriber growth of 2% quarter-on-quarter [to 219-million subscribers]; however, performance was impacted by continued aggressive competition and stringent regulatory requirements,” Dabengwa noted.

Group net addition subscriber guidance for the full-year increased marginally to 17.5-million.

Meanwhile, MTN’s former star performer, Nigeria, delivered lower-than-expected growth after facing a challenging regulatory environment.

Regulatory restrictions relating to the “dominant operator” ruling and continued unrest in the northern region resulted in MTN Nigeria reporting a marginal decline in subscribers to 58.4-million.

“While this muted subscriber performance is expected to impact revenue growth for the second half of the year, by mid-September, the operation had resolved a number of issues with the regulator resulting in an improvement in subscriber growth,” Dabengwa explained.

Meanwhile, MTN Irancell increased its subscriber base by 2% to 43.5-million despite the high mobile penetration rate and aggressive competition, while MTN Ghana overcame a weak macroeconomic environment, reporting a 0.8% rise in subscribers to 13.5-million during the quarter.

MTN Cameroon increased its subscribers by 9.7% to 11.2-million, while MTN Uganda surpassed the ten-million subscriber mark after increasing its base 2.6%.

MTN Sudan reported a net reduction of 361 000 subscribers and MTN Ivory Coast maintained market share despite a marginal decline in its subscriber base to 7.7-million.

MTN Syria delivered a marginal increase in subscribers to 5.7-million.