Afghan telco Roshan sees double-digit growth continuing

Afghan telecoms group Roshan is confident of maintaining double-digit revenue growth for at least the next two years as demand for data among the country's young and increasingly urbanised population surges, a top executive told Reuters on Wednesday.

Roshan is the market leader in Afghanistan, with its 5.8 million mobile subscribers giving it 35 per cent market share, ahead of units of South Africa's MTN and the United Arab Emirates' Etisalat.

"We have been growing revenue in double-digits over the last couple of years," said Altaf Ladak, Roshan chief operating officer, adding the firm was confident it would maintain double-digit growth for at least two more years.

This bullish outlook is in part based on Afghanistan's untapped potential. The country has mobile penetration of about 45 to 50 per cent, among the lowest globally, while the actual number of unique customers is about half of that, Ladak said.

Many phone users have two or three SIM cards to use according to whichever operator offers the best promotions, so about three-quarters of the country's 30 million people are thought to still be without a phone.

"Competition is very aggressive in terms of price and the cost of doing business in Afghanistan is high - you have security and fuel costs and you don't have the infrastructure that other countries provide," said Ladak.

"You need two generators on a site and fuel prices are high. We spend 10 per cent of our opex (operational expenditure) just on fuel."

About a fifth of Roshan's sites have grid power, with the rest relying on generators.

"You build a site and sometimes you build a road to get there," said Ladak.

Roshan - 51 per cent owned by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, 36.75 per cent by Cable & Wireless Communications Plc and 12.25 per cent by Swedish group TeliaSonera - is profitable, he said, declining to give figures.

In the past two years Roshan's non-voice earnings - including text - have grown from near zero to about 10 per cent of total revenue.

"I think we can double that within the next two to three years," said Ladak. "Data services are growing fast - you have two major groups of people who use data. One is the expat community and second is the youth - it's a very young country and these people are hungry for social media."

Data revenue is rising despite operators using 2G networks, with the government in the process of tendering for 3G licences.

"We are looking at it," said Ladak.

Roshan is present in all Afghan provinces and covers about 60 per cent of the population.

"My view is that over the next three to five years we will get to about 80 per cent of the population," said Ladak.

"We're investing about $60 million a year in infrastructure, which doesn't include if we go into 3G. We're looking at an expansion of the network and providing additional capacity and services."

About 23 per cent of Afghans live in urban areas, with urbanisation rising 4.7 per cent annually, according to the CIA Fact-book, while 42 per cent of people are under 15.