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Nigeria’s active phone lines hit 114.1m

By on March 26, 2013

Active telecoms subscriber base in Nigeria has further increased to hit 114.1 million as at the end of January, 2013, resulting in a teledensity of 81.78 during the same period.

This was contained in the latest telecoms industry’s subscriber base data released by the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission. According to the data, telecoms operators recorded additional 1.3 million active telephone lines in January 2013 alone, bringing the industry total to 114.4 million at the end of the month.

The 2012, the industry ended the year with combined industry subscriber base of 113.1 million up from 95.8 million active subscriptions in January, 2012. However, the latest data did now contain information for the month of February, 2013.

According to the NCC data, only Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operators such as MTN, Glo, Airtel and Etisalat contributed the additional 1.3 subscribers, as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators and fixedline operators further recorded decline in their ever-dwindling subscriber base.

The CDMA operators comprising Visafone, Multi-Links, Starcomms and the dormant Zoom Mobile experienced reduction from 2.9 million in December, 2012 to 2.8 million at the end of January, 2013.

This means about 100, 000 telecoms subscribers hitherto on the CDMA networks dropped their lines in January alone. Also the fixed line networks, which had active 418, 166 subscriber base in December, 2012, a marginal reduction was also recorded on their networks as their subscriptions fell to 406, 222 lines in January, 2013.

Meanwhile, the NCC data has revealed an increase from teledensity from 80.85 in December 2012 to 81.78 as at the end of January, this year. Teledensity is the percentage of connected lines in relation to the population at a given period of time and its growth is proportional to the growth in subscriber base.

Highlights of the latest industry data also revealed that telecoms firms continue to spend on network expansion to be able to accommodate more subscribers on their networks.

According to the data, telecoms industry installed capacity increased from 211.8 million at the December, 2012 to reach 226.6 million at the end of January, 2013.

Installed capacity is the total number of telephone lines which telecoms networks have build their network capacity to accommodate at a particular period of time.

(NationalMirror)