Movitel leveraged its competitive intelligence to target a largely untapped population segment to ensure Mozambique's progress, along with its own

Based on its recent research on the mobile communications market, Frost & Sullivan has presented Movitel with the 2013 Mozambican Frost & Sullivan Award for Competitive Strategy Leadership. Movitel has turned mobile communication into a basic need in the lower living standard measure(LSM) population groups by making its services widely accessible and affordable.

Its unique strategy of investing in large, greenfield networks to cover the entire country, including rural and remote areas of Mozambique, will lead to sustainable social development. This will not only benefit the community, but also widen Movitel's customer base.

Mozambique has a vast geographic area with low population density, which requires high investment and an intricate roll out of network infrastructure, especially in the rural areas. While competing telecom service providers prefer to focus on urban areas, Movitelhas built 2,500 2G/3G base stations and deployed 20,000 km of fibre opticalcables, enabling it to cover 100 percent of Mozambique’s districts and highways, and in the process, serve nearly 80 percent of the total population.

Movitel gained a competitive advantage by signing an agreement with Electricidade the Moçambique, the nationalpower company, which facilitated rapid network deployment across the country. Movitel also demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with any partner, including other operators, to share infrastructure and build networks.

Within one year of commencing commercial operations in Mozambique, Movitel was able to garner two million subscribers, which translates to 20 percent of the market share, by the end of 2012. In order to reach more customers in the rural areas, the company built a strong supply chain to sell its services door-to-door, thereby creating 20,000 jobs for sales agents. Additionally, it introduced preferential free packages that include free subscription charges, monthly bonus accounts, and infinite calls. Lastly, Movitel provided free internet to 2,500 schoolsnationwide.

"The Movitel brand is now established in Mozambique with high levels of awareness across the country, especially in rural areas and within the student populations that benefited from its free internet initiative,” said Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies IndustryAnalystNaila Govan-Vassen. "Additionally, the Movitel brand has gained the trust and support of the government due to the company’s contribution to social development and upliftment ofthe telecommunications sector."

Mozambique is now among the top three countries in the Sub-Saharan region (along with Nigeria and South Africa) with the strongest and most modern telecom infrastructure. Between 2010 and 2012, the infrastructure density of Mozambique doubled from 239 km per million people to 787 km per million people, and from 75BST per million people to more than 151BTS per million people. Movitel contributes to 70 percent of the country’s fibre optical cable infrastructure and 60 percent ofthe mobile phone network infrastructure.

In 31 districts across the country, Movitel provided mobile service access for the first time to at least 500,000 subscribers. Movitel is the first operator to expand 3G network covering 100% districts and its 3G network has been in the reach of many rural areas. Together with nationwide fibre cable network, Movitel has created a communication infrastructure platform to encourage the implementation of e-governance and development of ICT applications in the education and healthcare sectorsfor the socio-economic and political development of the country.

"Movitel’s initiatives have already yielded impressive results, to its subscriber base and market share, as well as extensive customer value resulting from a strong and reliable national network.” noted Govan-Vassen. "The majority of these customers will be loyal to Movitel’s brand due to its strategic effort to reach them, especially the students who will grow up with the Movitel brand."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has leveraged competitive intelligence to successfully execute a competitive strategy that results in stronger marketshare, competitive brand positioning and customer satisfaction.

Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.