Airtel Africa's voice revenue and overall growth suffered because of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)'s ban on conducting sales promotions in Nigeria, Airtel Africa CEO Christian De Faria mentioned during Bharti Airtel's Q2-FY15 earnings conference call. This ban had come into effect on March 31, 2014 and was lifted on October 31, 2014. Besides Airtel, Globacom, MTN, InterCellular NIG, Etisalat & Multilinks Telecoms were the other telcos banned from sales promotions. "We were not the only one affected in the voice decline in Nigeria and so that means of course that other operators were also affected. Etisalat was the only one which has not been affected and has been aggressive enough to capture this momentum." De Faria mentioned that now that the ban has been lifted, "we do hope this will augur well for growth in Nigeria. Also, we have not declined in proportion compared to our competitors in this market. So, I think we have all the strategies of product now to regain the momentum. In voice, our strategy may have not been in one or few markets, adapted to the condition and we have been really adjusting, in the last two to three months, a lot of strategy around the customer-centric organization and a segmented approach. Data growth I must say is a good story." Focus on data: "You have to understand that we came from a very low side two years ago, and I must say that in every market data is representing a growth momentum. We have a lot of…
