Nigerian telecoms record fresh 2.99m subscriptions

Against the current economic recession, the Nigerian telecoms sector has grown in its uptake as operators in the industry just recorded 2.99 million new subscriptions on their networks. The development, which represents a growth of 1.27 per cent, was recorded in January 2017. This puts the total subscriptions in the 15 years’ history of the […]

Against the current economic recession, the Nigerian telecoms sector has grown in its uptake as operators in the industry just recorded 2.99 million new subscriptions on their networks.

The development, which represents a growth of 1.27 per cent, was recorded in January 2017.

This puts the total subscriptions in the 15 years’ history of the sector in the country at 238.59 million subscriptions from 235.60 million it stood at the end of 2016.

The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) in its latest industry statistics further indicated that out of the total registered telephone lines in the country, 155.07 million or 64.99 per cent are active, leaving the rest 83.52 million or 35.01 per cent dormant.

It will be noted that currently the sector is being driven by four service categories comprising the Global System for Mobile Communication system (GSM), the Code Division Multiple Access, the Fixed Wired/Wireless system and the latest Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.

The growth in subscriptions of the industry is dominated by the GSM operators, who, in the first month of this year, threw up their subscribers’ base from 231.60 million in December 2016 to 234.60 in January 2017.

However, The CDMA wing of the sector has continued falling due to the increasing preference for the GSM service over the latter, especially, in the country and remained unchanged at 3.586 million December, 2016 and January this year.

The President, Association of Telecommunications Companies in Nigeria (ATCON), Olusola Teniola, said “GSM technology is the dominant technology in a majority of African countries and Nigeria follows this trend.”

The latest figures released by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the contribution of the telecoms sector indicated that more telecom services are being utilized across all sectors of the economy.

Revealing that the sector contributed N1.399 billion to Nigeria’s GDP in the fourth quarter of 2016, it further demonstrated the acceptance of ‘telecoms’ as being the enabler for an improved and efficient means of doing business, living good lives and interacting within communities.