MTN Ghana says its MyMTN and MoMo apps use no data, pushing back against a widespread belief that they help drain the bundles customers complain are vanishing too fast.
The company made the point during a webinar streamed on Facebook this week, its latest answer to a long running complaint that has dogged Ghana’s biggest network for months.
MTN says both apps are zero rated, so customers pay nothing from their bundles to open them, buy airtime, send money or check balances. Its own website tells users the app does not use any data. What has changed, the company argues, is behaviour. Subscribers now spend far more time on Instagram, TikTok, video streaming and online games, all of which pull from a data bundle. The apps are not the culprit, MTN says; heavier browsing is.
That message lands in the middle of a running dispute. Ghanaian users have complained for months that their bundles empty within days, a frustration many have labelled “vanishing data,” with some going further and accusing operators of theft. Campaigns such as #FixDataNow have spread online among students, traders and freelancers who say they pay for data they never seem to use.
MTN has rejected the theft claims. Chief executive Stephen Blewett told a stakeholder forum in Accra in April that the company gains nothing by taking what customers buy. “There is zero incentive for MTN to steal data from you,” he said. Its Nigerian arm made a similar case at a forum in early June, pointing to streaming and automatic backups as the real drain.
Official checks have not backed the theft allegations. The Communications Ministry has said billing integrity tests by the National Communications Authority (NCA) found that data bundles were credited correctly, and the NCA now runs such tests every quarter. Even so, the complaints have not died down.
The stakes are high for MTN because of its size. As the dominant operator, carrying significant market power status since 2020, its pricing and metering face constant public scrutiny. The company has also leaned on the apps to grow, offering 500MB of free data to customers who log in to MyMTN.
For now, MTN’s assurance and its customers’ suspicion sit side by side. The regulator’s periodic billing checks remain the main independent test of who is right.
