Airtel’s Bernard Muteti, the man who pioneered first MVNO in the region

He spearheaded the launch of first ever MVNO, Equitel in the Kenyan market and the region. This led to Airtel Kenya winning the prestigious ‘Best Wholesale Operator’ global award at the MVNO World Congress in Nice, France in April 2015. He is Bernard Muteti, Airtel Kenya’s Enterprise and Wholesale Business Director.

A look into who Mr. Muteti is:

Bernard is a business leader with extensive commercial experience in Telecoms accross Sub Sahara Africa and Emerging Markets. A first born in a family of four, he attended his primary school in Makueni County before joining Nairobi School for his O levels. Bernard is a First Class Honors Graduate in Bachelors of Commerce, Marketing Option, from the University of Nairobi, prides of extensive executive and leadership training from leading institutions like The University of Pretoria SA, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), and is a fluent French Speaker. He is also a speaker in international industry conferences and summits.

He started his telecommunication career largely in Access Kenya Group before transitioning to Orange Telecom. He spent several years at Orange before joining Airtel Africa as the Group Head of Corporate Business, Global Accounts and Strategic Partnerships across Airtel’s 17 operating countries in Sub Saharan Africa. More recently, he has been the General Manager in charge of Airtel‘s MVNO Business and Multi-Brand Strategy and yuMobile Business before his executive appointment to Director.

On this issue we feature Bernard Muteti, Entreprise and Wholesale Business Director at Airtel Kenya. We look at his role at Airtel, Kenya, Airtel’s role in the MVNO space in Kenya and the entreprise business at Airtel, which he oversees. Here are the excerpts.

CIO: Kindly take me through your role as Entreprise and Wholesale Business Director at Airtel Kenya?

BM: I am responsible for three business portfolios – Enterprise Business Unit (Business Markets), MVNO Business and yuMobile Business.

CIO: How strong is Airtel’s enterprise business and what are the plans for this segment?

BM: Firstly we have our business mobility services, an area where Airtel controls significant market share with a vast majority of businesses using our services that cut accross post-paid and pre-paid business voice plans, mobile data services, B2B payment solutions on Airtel Money and device plans. Businesses with regional operations particularly find our one network roaming services very compelling as they are able to roam to any of Airtel’s 20 operating countries and call at local rates using their home network sim card, feeling at home, away from home. Stress free, and true value for money. We also offer collaboration services such as audio conferencing and closed user group voice plans, significantly lowering the cost of communication for organisations whose employees need to talk frequently, and eliminating need to travel between branch offices for business meetings.

Away from mobility services, we are now transitioning into a fully integrated operator with fixed enterprise network services such as leased lines, IPVPN and MPLS as anchor services. We have built an extensive Pan Africa MPLS infrastructure to offer cross boarder connectivity to the many global and multinational corporations headquartered in Kenya. Locally, Airtel’s expansive GSM network, tie ups with fibre infrastructure companies and microwave vendors and our investment in cables such as SEACOM and EASSY now gives us the ability to offer national fixed connectivity services to local businesses. We have already started to on-board customers on these services, and the market can expect to see us playing a lot more actively and aggressively in this space. We are also working on an array of cash and carry SME products we will be launching soon to address the large SME market, as well as host of hosted and managed services including M2M asset management.

CIO: What new emerging initiatives is Airtel looking into this year?

BM: 2016 is a pivotal year for the region’s digital development: The proliferation of smartphones within the market coupled with over 100% teledensity within a market of three GSM operators and advent of MVNOs clearly shows that voice is largely saturated. New opportunities must be explored: Big data is yet to be harnessed with operators working on launching innovative data-driven solutions such as M2M and video as a service to take advantage of the opportunity.

Digital transmission is driving changes in consumer behavior whereas increasingly connected devices are driving demand for high-speed connectivity and ever-greater data consumption. This has an undoubted impact on operators’ models, as it not only puts pressure on infrastructure capacity, it also challenges the sustainability of current pricing models such as unlimited data packages.

We need to be in this convergence conversation within the telecom ecosystem (connectivity, services, devices, content, etc.).

CIO: At the enterprise market, which is an area you oversee, communication needs are wide ranging hence need for operators to be innovative inorder to launch attractive services. Is this happening within Airtel and can you highlight some partnerships?

BM: Where we have an opportunity to partner with vendors or providers to enrich our go to market, reduce time to market and attendant costs of building services and platforms, we are not shy to.

We share infrastructure for instance which is common industry practice, and we are working with multiple partners on the hosted and managed services we will be launching in the market. Another example is our partnership Thuraya to offer satellite IP phones and communication services to government, UN and relief agencies operating in remote areas.

We have recently partnered with a local vendor and launched a hosted Bulk SMS service that our customers can now get from Airtel. These kinds of partnerships are one of the ways we support and empower local innovators, entrepreneurs and small businesses.

CIO: You spearheaded the launch of the first ever MVNO in Kenyan Market, that’s Equitel, which has received an impressive uptake. What is Airtel’s key role in this and how are you benefitting as Airtel?

BM: MVNOs are not new globally; in Europe there are over 700 MVNOs. In countries like The Netherlands, MVNOs control up to 40% of the market share. We are hosting Equitel on the unused capacity on our network at an agreed wholesale rental charge much the same way a hotel rents out spare rooms to optimize usage. MVNOs are thus a wholesale revenue stream. For the MVNO, this eliminates the need to invest in costly mobile infrastructure as they enter the mobile space to create value. Building and running mobile cellular networks is very costly with heavy capital outlay. Growth and scale are thus critical to recover costs, and MVNOs help MNOs to achieve this. MVNOs are also a market segmentation game, offering services that address user specific needs. This aligns with Airtel’s innovation and differentiation agenda, and desire to continue delivering choice and value for money to Kenyans. Indeed, in April 2015, Airtel Kenya won the global “Best Wholesale Operator” award at the MVNO World Congress in France. Airtel Kenya was judged as contributing significantly to the growth of MVNO Business, and a Catalyst for the growth the MNVO Industry in Africa and beyond.

CIO: Sitting at the Helm of Entreprise Business for Airtel Kenya what kind of opportunities do you see for SMEs and the Government?

BM: Opportunities abound for SMEs. A few years back before the undersea cables landed the price for an MB of dedicated Internet bandwidth was about $4000. Today the price has dropped to about $100. This, and availability of broadband services means connectivity has become much more affordable, and we are seeing SMEs embracing technology at a faster rate. Tailored mobile voice, mobile data and device plans are available for SMEs. Then there are hosted/cloud services such as hosted email, web development, domain hosting, content and hosted applications (‘software as a service’) such as payroll programs that help SMEs to professionalise their businesses affordably. The industry is also bustling with techpreneurs; many of who are SME start-ups, building applications and innovations that are benefiting individuals and corporate Kenya.

On government, ICT is enhancing public participation and engagement, and driving greater accessibility to government services. Elections are electronic, government services can be accessed online through huduma centers and payments done through mobile money, elections are conducted electronically, security and surveillance is leveraging ICT, smart cities are coming up with centralized transport management systems, and government agencies collaborating more effectively using IPT and Unified Communications, to name but a few. In Kenya for instance, all government buildings are interconnected through a government common core network. Then there are mega projects such as LAPSSET and the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). All these present opportunities for operators and service providers such as Airtel to collaborate with government under the public private partnership framework as well as offer solutions that help the government to serve its citizenry better. Our vast scalable infrastructure makes it easy for us to devolve our services to the grassroots level.

CIO:Last year Airtel also saw the acquisition of 2.7 million yumobile subscribers. How has this acquisition been able to boost Airtel as a business?

BM: Every incremental active customer means more traffic and minutes of use on the network. The purchase of yU customers also affirms our long-term agenda for Kenya, a market in which Airtel has invested over 20B KESH over the last five years. We retained the yU mobile prefix meaning yU customers did not need to change their numbers, and we have maintained the same packages and price plans so that we continue to offer the same value and benefit to our yU subscribers, while they enjoy wider coverage and greater 3G speeds.