The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has released new data on the performance in the telecommunications industry for the month of July 2021.
Going by the regulator’s data published on its website, active telephony subscription, which until May 2021 had been on the downward slope, continued the rise it found in June 2021. July Subscription came to 187,805,237, as against the figure for June which was 187,611,501, a subtle increase over May figure by 584,984. Since October 2020, telephone subscription figures had been on steady decline. This recent gradual increase could be attributed to the recent lifting of the ban imposed on sales of new SIM cards and replacement of lost SIM, which was also responsible for the decline in figures as lost SIM cards were not being replaced.
The embargo on the registration of new SIM cards last year was intended to allow the NCC carry out a comprehensive audit of the country’s subscriber registration database and thereby to crack down on multiple SIM registrations and fraudulent sales. This in turn, it was hoped, would encourage registration.
The objective of the audit exercise is to verify and ensure compliance by Mobile Network Operators with the set quality standards and requirements of SIM Card Registration as issued by the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and the Commission.
Likewise, Teledensity for the month of July also increased to 98.28%, from 97.98% recorded in June, 2021. This is however lower than the figure recorded same period in 2020, which was then at 104.41%. Teledensity is defined as the number of active telephone connections per one hundred (100) inhabitants living within an area and is expressed as a percentage figure. Since March 2019, Nigeria’s Teledensity is calculated based on a population estimate of 190 million.
The statistics from the NCC further reveals that with a market share of 73,123,732, MTN Nigeria still leads with 39.01%, while Globacom follows with a distant 27.28% and subscriber figure of 51,137,799. Airtel Nigeria follows closely with 50,301,237 and market share of 26.83% and 9mobile with 12,908,092 subscribers takes 6.89% of the market.
During the month in review, 734 subscribers ported to other network operators. NCC records that Airtel was the highest host with 543 subscribers leaving other networks for its network. 191 moved into 9mobile network from other networks. Incidentally, out of the 774 subscribers that left their networks, 9mobile has the highest loss with 323 subscribers, followed by Globacom and Airtel with 232 and 219 respectively. MTN Nigeria neither received porting subscribers, nor did it lose its subscribers to other networks, according to the data from NCC.
Consistent with Section 89 Subsection 3(d) of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 (NCA 2003), the Commission is mandated to monitor and report on the state of the Nigerian telecommunications industry, provide statistical analyses and identify industry trends with regard to services, tariffs, operators, technology, subscribers, issues of competition and dominance, among others, with a view to identifying areas where regulatory intervention would be needed.
In view of this, the Commission regularly conducts studies and surveys and produces reports on the telecommunications industry, and telecommunications operators are obligated, under the terms of the licenses, to provide the NCC with such data on a regular basis for analytical review and publishing.
