our resilience as an industry, our early decisions
as a group and our creativity as a team have enabled Mauritius Telecom to maintain sound results despite the
circumstances.
I am honoured to present Mauritius Telecom’s Annual
Report for 2021.
Our country and the world at large are doing their
best to cope with the lingering effects of the Covid-19
pandemic. Major disruptions in logistics and supply
chains, rising prices generally and a depressed
business, investment and consumer mood are just
some of the challenges we all have been facing.
Fortunately, our resilience as an industry, our early
decisions as a group and our creativity as a team
have enabled Mauritius Telecom to maintain sound
results despite the circumstances.
We have maintained profitabilit , improved service
levels, launched very innovative offers, enhanced
the wellness of our staff, stood by the population
in trying times and continued to grow significantl
on all fronts. At the time of writing, in May 2022, we
have now passed the landmark figu e of one million
mobile customers, no mean feat in a country with a
population of nearly 1.3 million.
Financial results
For the year 2021, I am proud to report the excellent
performance of Mauritius Telecom with a net profit of
Rs 594 million. The Group’s revenue grew by +4.5%
over the year to reach Rs 10.9 billion. At Rs 8.2 billion,
gross profit also showed year-on-year growth of +4.1%.
This performance is exceptional as highlighted by
our board especially given that we were directly and
financially impacted by: a lack of revenue in inbound
roaming, increase in the exchange rates causing our
costs to soar, an increase in staff costs following a
stipulated salary negotiation exercise, a voluntary
retirement scheme (VRS) requested by our staff and
approved by the Board of Directors amounting to Rs 375m,
disrupted worldwide logistics causing a lack of stock
for the year end and a business market reducing its
consumption due to economic challenges.
Mauritius Telecom, standing by the nation
We have remained steadfast in our commitment to
our people and country, helping the authorities and
standing by the nation.
beSafeMoris was critical in the dissemination of officia
information. The digital work-access permits (WAP), for the second consecutive year, allowed Mauritians to
circulate during the second lockdown. New features
launched in 2021 included the digital vaccination pass,
QR scanning and red zone information. beSafeMoris
has been a tremendous success with over 750,000
users (web & mobile).
MT also developed a press conference management
software to allow the authorities to communicate with
the public at large more efficient.
During the second national confinement, we again
offered free viewing of more than 100 my.t TV channels,
doubled the volume allowance of our broadband
packages, and suspended penalties for late payment
and disconnection for non-payment.
Our business partners also matter to us. Many of our
retailers were adversely affected by the pandemic.
To help them during this difficul period, we launched
several schemes for our e-vouchers and starter packs.
We also rewarded the best performers with a lucky
draw, which had a star prize of Rs 1 million.
A new league of connectivity
Our customers’ usage and behaviour have changed
rapidly over the years. This trend has only been
accelerated by the pandemic, with even more people
connected, more users at home, more devices and more
people working and studying from home and keeping
connected virtually with their families. Connectivity
had become truly indispensable.
With the way our lives have been impacted, we
knew that if we didn’t want to hold back our people,
businesses and our country, just access to internet
would not be sufficient Excellent Access in terms of
speed, capacity and resilience had to be the norm.
A few years ago, we started a revolution by rolling out
fib e island-wide, thus placing Mauritius as the 8th
most fibe ed country in the world. We thus laid a solid
foundation in terms of our infrastructure for the next
digital evolution.
2021 was a defining year in that evolution: we propelled
Mauritius into the gigabit era and revolutionised
connectivity on mobile and through fib e. In July, we
became the fir t telco operator in Mauritius to launch
5G with the my.t 5G Experience Zones in the Ebene
Cybercity, Bagatelle Mall, University of Mauritius and
La City Trianon. This effectively took mobile data
connectivity to the next level, with superfast data
connectivity, speeds of up to 1 Gbps and lower latency
opening a plethora of possibilities.
Yet another milestone came with the launch of
the fir t ever 1 Gbps fib e internet offer in Mauritius
in September 2021. To give a wider choice to our
customers, MT reviewed its portfolio of residential
offers to make available a new range of connectivity
solutions, launching a new 500 Mbps package and
making a significant price reduction on the 100 Mbps
and 50 Mbps packages. We also reviewed our TV
offerings and packs to make quality TV more affordable.
Innovating for the people
Mauritius Telecom strives to go beyond helping
its own customers to supporting everyone in the
country. Four years back we developed the Citizen
Support Unit website. We went further in 2021 by
launching the CSU mobile app, which enables users
to register their complaints, suggestions or queries
with more than 300 government entities and gives
access to a variety of other features.
Specifically for our own customers and to keep them
safe, MT launched Alias, a my.t mobile service, that
allows prepay customers to keep their mobile numbers
private when recharging through an e-voucher at any
retail outlet or in a Telecom shop.
Payment using digital means became a must during
the public health crisis. To keep students safe, we
worked with the University of Mauritius and the Open
University of Mauritius to ease the payment process
for administrative fees through my.t money and my.t
billpay. We later extended this facility to the students
of Polytechnics Mauritius.
Our groundbreaking partnership with Showmax, a
leading streaming provider in Africa, was a source of
utter delight for my.t customers and football fans. We
thus brought live UEFA Champions League and other
major football league matches (Premier League, La
Liga, Europa Conference League, Europa League etc.)
to Mauritius.
International recognition
Our various initiatives have been recognised
internationally and we can justifiably take pride in
having been nominated three times for the 2021
AfricaCom Awards ceremony. AfricaCom Awards
celebrate outstanding contributions for connectivity,
digital inclusion and development in Africa.
Even better, we won two awards which we dedicate
to our country: the Connectivity Project of the year
Award for our Life Extraordinary initiative i.e. the
launch of the 1 Gbps fib e internet offer in September
2021 and the deployment of the fir t my.t 5G
Experience Zones. Our second award was the Most
Innovative Product or Service Award for the my.t
360° Digital Operation project.
In 2021, we were also recognised for our internal
initiatives: Mauritius Telecom was conferred the
officia Great Place to Work certific tion. We are
thrilled with this achievement as it places us amongst
the elite companies who are considered as best-in class employers
Looking forward
The forthcoming year will certainly be very
challenging as the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak
lingers on and now the war in Ukraine further affects
the global economy with disrupted supply chains
and prices soaring.
Nonetheless, I am fully convinced that Mauritius
Telecom will be able to withstand fresh challenges.
We have already shown our resilience and we are
fully prepared to meet whatever new ones may come
our way.
We will continue to focus on building greater
efficie y across the MT Group and on consolidating
our market position in key sectors such as content
and the enterprise market. Last but not least we will
pursue our diversific tion strategy into fin ech and
managed cloud services.
In all this, the unwavering support and guidance of our
Chairman and Board of Directors have been invaluable.
As ever, I am also indebted to our MT Group family for
their passion, dedication, and faith in our vision. They
are the real strength of Mauritius Telecom.
We are also very grateful to our customers, who have
remained loyal and who are the core reason we exist.
With such support from all our stakeholders, despite
a lack of visibility as to what the future may hold, we
are confident that Mauritius Telecom now has a solid
foundation and is ready to surf any wave that may
come our way.
Manvendra (Sherry)
Singh
Chief Executive Officer
May 2022