Flash Foresight by Daniel Burrus

Author:Daniel Burrus
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

A Tale of Two Telecoms

MTN has an intriguing business model. It is not driven purely by profit, at least not in the conventional sense. Instead, its operation is directed by what it calls a “triple bottom line,” a cord woven of three strands of equal importance: social impact, environmental impact, and financial profit.

As we saw earlier, when they bring phone service into an area that has no electric power infrastructure, MTN brings power plants into those areas. But they don’t bring in nineteenth- or twentieth-century technologies, they go twenty-first century all the way: their power plants are based on renewable energy, in this case, biodiesel produced from waste cooking grease and plant materials. Not only is this a relatively nonpolluting operation, it also avoids the undesirable side effect of making the region dependent on international petroleum politics. In fact, it helps to build the local economy. MTN has stated that part of its mission is to be a carbon-neutral organization. One of its current goals is to reduce fuel consumption at its power stations by 1,000 percent. How? By using wind and solar.

Says John Ludike, a senior manager with MTN, “It’s not just about infrastructure and financial feasibility, it’s also about having an impact on the communities in which we operate, putting people in touch with each other.

“Part of our licensing agreement in many of these markets,” explains Ludike, “is that there has to be a transfer of capabilities in the countries in which we’re operating, as well as of the manner in which we select our talent. We put quite a bit of time and emphasis on working with our international management to put those capabilities back into the communities.”

Once you have electricity, you can charge your cell phones—but the process doesn’t stop there. Once you have electricity, you have light and you can pump water. And once you can do that, MTN discovered, it’s not just lights that illuminate and water that starts to flow. Ideas start flowing, too, and you see an acceleration of economic, intellectual, and cultural development. The entire area begins to grow.

MTN moves into its poorer new markets realistically. To avoid problems with collection, it started in many of these countries with prepaid cell phone service. In some countries, it started out with bare-bones service: local phone minutes, period. As the markets have grown, in some areas it’s been able to expand to the point where it customers want more advanced services, such as data, Web browsing, and 3G service, which supports streaming video transmission over phone lines and advanced services such as mobile banking.

In every country MTN has entered, the economy has grown consistently. As an area grows economically, its residents start wanting more cell phone features, and they also become able to afford them. As they use more features, they see more growth, which lets them afford more features. It’s good for MTN. It’s even better for its customers. MTN is not really a telecom company, it is an economic empowerment agency disguised as a telecom company.

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