Active telecoms subscribers increased by 580,330 in December – NCC
Active subscribers of telecommunications services in the country increased by 580,330 in December, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said.
The telecommunications industry regulator said this in its monthly Subscriber/Operator Data on Tuesday in Lagos.
It said active subscribers increased by 580,330 from the figure in November to stand at 154,529,780 in December 2016.
The figure in November according to NCC stood at 153,949,450.
According to the data, 154,124,602 of the 154,529,780 active numbers subscribed to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network services.
The GSM operators’ active customers increased by 577,438 on the 153,547,164 subscribers recorded in November.
It stated that of the GSM operators, MTN had 61,840,461 users in December, which increased by 560,168 against 61,280,293 recorded in November.
Globacom’s figure increased in December by 91,360, giving a total of 37,359,843 customers as against 37,268,483 in November.
Airtel had 34,116,409 subscribers in the month under review, which increased by 739,853 users, as against 33,376,556 recorded in November.
Etisalat, however, recorded a drop in customers by 811,943 giving a customer base of 20,809,889 as against 21,621,833 users in November.
The Code Division Multiple Access operators had 217,566 users in December, which was the same with the result of November.
Between the two surviving CDMA service providers, Visafone had 213,106 customers, while Multi-Links had 4,460 in the month under review.
The monthly subscriber/operator data showed that the Fixed Wireless network (landline) consumers remained at 26,865 in December.
NCC noted that Section 89 Subsection 3(c) of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 mandated it to monitor and report the state of the telecommunications industry.
“The commission is mandated to provide statistical analyses and identify industry trends with regard to services, tariffs, operators, technology, subscribers, issues of competition and dominance.
“This is with a view to identifying areas where regulatory intervention will be needed.
“The commission regularly conducts studies, surveys and produces reports on the telecommunications industry.
“Therefore, telecommunications operators are obligated, under the terms of the licenses, to provide NCC with such data on a regular basis for analytical review and publishing,” the report said.
