MTN Group Limited (formerly M-Cell)[2] is a South African multinational corporation and mobile telecommunications provider.

[47][48] In March 2019 MTN launched a WhatsApp channel to let its customers buy airtime and data bundles through the messaging app.

[53][54] In December 2019, former Deputy Finance Minister of the Government of South Africa, Mcebisi Jonas, was appointed as the board chairperson of the company.

[55] In August 2020, MTN decided to sell its shares in Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen, and to divest its 49% minority holding in Irancell over time.

The company's decision was based on the fact that their assets in the Middle East contributed less than 4% to group earnings in the first half of the year.

[58] In February 2021, the MTN Group partnered with Mastercard to ensure safe and secure global e-commerce payments of their customer base in 16 African countries.

A Mastercard virtual payment platform, that is linked to MTN MoMo (Mobile Money) wallets makes this possible.

[59] In March 2021, MTN CEO Ralph Mupita announced during the company's annual results call that the group was now considering spinning off its mobile money activities.

[61] MTN South Africa provides GSM, UMTS, HSPA+ (21.1 Mbit/s), HSUPA (42 Mbit/s, 2100 MHz), VOIP, 3G, 4G, LTE and 5G services.

[82] On 18 March 2010, it was announced that MTN signed a sponsorship deal with English football club Manchester United F.C.

From 2013 till date, its foundation - MTN Foundation- has sponsored Nigerian Students with financial and educational grants well over ₦2.5 billion.

[87] In June 2012, Reuters and the BBC reported an allegation by Chris Kilowan, a former executive for the company in Iran, that MTN Group may have been complicit in securing American telecommunications technology from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems on behalf of Irancell, in violation of trade sanctions against Iran.

[89] In May 2013, Turkcell dropped its multibillion-dollar US lawsuit against MTN Group, citing a US Supreme Court ruling that hurt its case.

[90][91] In 2015, the Nigerian subsidiary of MTN was fined by the Government of Nigeria through the telecommunications regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for partial compliance of regulatory guidelines to Mobile Network Operators to disconnect from their network, all improperly registered Subscribers Identification Modules (SIM).

The commission exercised section 20(1) of the Telephone Subscribers regulation (TSR) law on MTN, leading to a calculated fine of $5.2 billion, according to the constitution.

The compliance audit carried out by the NCC on MTN network revealed unregistered 5.2 million customers lines were not deactivated as directed.

This led to the NCC fining MTN with the sum of $1000 for each unregistered SIM according to the Telephone Subscribers regulation (TSR) law, which amounted to $5.2bn.

[94] The new management employed a diplomatic measure between the government of the Republic of South Africa and its Nigerian counterpart to ameliorate the burden of the liabilities from the fine.