Nation’s active phone lines hit 127m • Teledensity hits 91.2%, connected lines now 169m • 45,101 subscribers exchange operators through MNP in Q4

By Bankole Orimisan

FROM about 400,000 telephone lines provided by moribund Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) in 2000, the country, as at the end of last year, now has 127 million active phone subscriptions. 

  Indeed, the latest subscriber statistics, the December edition, released yesterday, by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), showed that the country connected 169 million telephone lines covering the GSM, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operator and Fixed wired/wireless lines technologies, out of which 127 million were currently active by end of Decmber.

    Meanwhile, in the Mobile Number Porting scheme, launched on April 22, 2013 by NCC, about 45,101 subscribers exchanged mobile operators in quarter four of 2013.  

    Further breakdown of the statistics showed that the quartet of GSM operators including MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat connected 159 million lines with 124 million active. The CDMA, whose fortunes plummeted in the last five years, sustained a downward trend with a connection of 7.6 million lines, while only 2.4 million lines remained active. 

   The fixed wired/wireless operators connected 2.3 million lines with only 360,537 lines left active.

   Besides, Nigeria saw a growth in its teledensity, from 81.7 per cent in January 2013 to 91.1 per cent by the end of the year under review.

  Telephone density or teledensity is the number of telephone connections for every hundred individuals living within an area. It varies widely across the nations and also between urban and rural areas within a country. 

   Analysts said that telephone density has significant correlation with the per capita GDP of the area, adding that it is also used as an indicator of economic development of the country or specific region.

   Going further, the statistics showed that telecommunications operators’ total installed capacity, which was 226.6 million by January 2013 went up to about 248.4 million by the end of the year. 

   It could also be deduced from the statistics that MTN Nigeria, which recently reported revenues of N794 billion in 2013 and paid N1.23 trillion to government as taxes in the last 13 years, remained the largest mobile operator in the country, with over 56 million subscribers and 45 per cent market share.

   Globacom, owned by oil magnate, Otunba Mike Adenuga, followed with 21 per cent market share and over 25 million subscription; Airtel, with 24.8 million subscription controls 20 per cent of the market. Etisalat, after five years of operations in the country has about 18 million subscribers and 14 per cent market share. 

   The MNP statistics showed that in October, 8,105 subscribers ported out; 7,830 in November and 5,850 in December.

    In terms of porting in, 8, 112; 8, 242 and 6,962 subscribers ported into the networks in October, November and December respectively of the period under review. 

    The statistics further showed that within the period, Airtel, which gained 9,919 subscribers, lost 3,650 subscribers to other networks; Etisalat gained 8,373 and lost 2,756 subscriptions; Globacom, which lost 3,383, gained 2787 subscribers and MTN, with 11,996 subscription loss, gained 2,777 subscribers.

   The CDMA operators, including Visafone; Multilinks; Starcomms and Mtel, which started the year with about 14 million subscriptions lost about 6.35 million connected lines to end the year with 7.6 million.           

   Meanwhile, GSM operators started the year with 138 million connected lines and 111 million active users. 

   The statistics further showed that the GSM (mobile) technology takes 97.83 per cent of the market, while mobile (CDMA) controls 1.88 per cent and the Fixed (Wired/Wireless) has 0.29 per cent market acceptance.