Regulator says inactive phone lines have climbed to 67 million

The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has announced that the number of inactive lines in the country has increased from 65,186,763 in May to 67,331,498 in June 2016.

The NCC made the announcement in the its Monthly Subscriber Data report which was made available to the press on Sunday in Lagos.

The report revealed that there were an additional 2,144,735 inactive numbers within that period, leading up to the increase.

In the report, it also showed that of the 2017,150,404 connected lines, only 149,818,906 of those were active and in use.

The report also revealed that out of the 67,331,498 inactive lines, GSM lines and networks had a lion share with 63,934,119 lines.

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“The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA mobile) operators had a share of 3,210,489; while the Fixed Wired/Wireless networks had a total of 182,662 unused telecommunications lines.

“More so of the 149,818,906 active lines, the GSM networks had 149,179,083 numbers, adding a total of 990,040 lines to their May number of 148,189,043 active lines.

“The CDMA operators had 454,092 active lines, as their active numbers reduced by 33,049 lines, from the May result of 487,141 active numbers.

“The Fixed/Wireless networks had a share of 170,539 of the active lines, reducing their May 2016 record of 171,974 by 1,435 lines in June,’’ the report said.

The report also reports that the teledensity of Nigeria's telecommunications industry also increased to 107.01 per cent in June, in comparison to 106.32 per cent in May 2016.