Telecommunication service
providers in Nigeria are counting their losses in one month due to the
loss of four million subscribers.
A quick peep at statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) by The Guardian
revealed that the four major operators MTN, Airtel, Globacom and
9Mobile collectively lost four million phone subscribers between June
and July this year.
“Subscriptions to
telephone services fell from 143 million in June to 139 million in
July. The four million drop in active telephone subscriptions increased
inactive lines to 16 million in seven months,” reported The Guardian.
This
has inadvertently affected teledensity (the number of telephone
connections for every hundred individuals living within an area) which
continues to fall from 143 million in June to 139 million in July. With
the four million drop in active telephone subscriptions, the number of
inactive lines has been increased to 16 million in seven months.
The
NCC statistics showed that the controversies that surrounded 9mobile’s
protracted $1.2billion syndicated loans from 13 banks have kept it as
the operator with the least percentage of the market share with 12.7 per
cent which amounts to 17.6 million subscribers.
MTN
continues to dominate the market with the lion share of 35.8 per cent
equalling 49.7 million subscribers. Globacom follows it with 37 million
subscribers and 26.8 per cent market share while Airtel controls 24 per
cent of the market with 34.1 million subscribers.
Individual
statistics of the service providers showed that by the end of Q2, MTN
recorded -12.08 per cent growth; Globacom saw -0.22 per cent; Airtel had
-1.53 per cent, and 9mobile down by -8.15 per cent.
The telecommunication sector contributed N1.5 trillion to Nigeria’s Growth Domestic Product (GDP) in the second quarter of 2017.
However, the NCC statistics suggests that the sector could have
contributed more barring the economic recession which has been sighted
as the reason for the plummet in the number of active telephone lines in
Nigeria.