Internet users reduce further to 92m in March

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said on Monday that internet users on Nigeria’s telecommunications networks had reduced further to 92,409,962, as at March 2016. The commission made this known in its monthly Internet Subscriber Data which was obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

A breakdown of the data showed that internet users on both the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), and the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks had gone down by 1,340,668.

It further said that 93,750,630 subscribers surfed the internet in February, but that only 92,409,962 did in March.The data showed that out of the 92,409,962 internet users in March, 92,285,052 were on GSM networks, while 124,910 users were on the CDMA.

Of the 92,285,052 internet users on the GSM networks in the month under review, the document showed that MTN Nigeria had 33,356,595 customers browsing on its network.

It stated that MTN suffered a decrease of 2,247,775 internet subscribers in March, after it recorded 35,604,370 users in the month of February. According to the report, Globacom had 26,530,420 customers surfing the net in March, showing a reduction of 845,583 from its February's record of 25,684,837.

It said, however, that the Airtel Nigeria network recorded a rise of users with 17,155,181 internet users in the month of March, as against 17,079,646 customers in February.

"The records, therefore, showed that the Airtel Nigeria network users increased by 75,535 in the month of March,’’ the document said.

The data also showed that Etisalat had 15,242,856 internet users in March, as against the 15,231,652 in February, recording an increase of 11,204 ursers in the month under review. It also revealed that the CDMA operators (Multi-Links and Visafone), had a joint total of 124,910 internet users on their networks in March.

It showed that the only surviving two CDMA networks in the country listed a decrease of 25,215 internet subscribers in the month under review, from the 150,125 users they recorded in January.

"Visafone had 124,768 customers surfing the internet in March, showing a reduction of 25,185 users from the February record of 149,953. Multi-Links had 142 internet users in the month of March, showing a reduction of 30 customers from the February record of 172 users,'' the data showed.

The document stressed the need for more Nigerians to embrace the internet, to speed up the country's progress towards achieving 30 per cent broadband penetration by 2018.