Service providers rue loss of 4m subscribers in one month

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.

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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.

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Pulse reported that 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.