The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has released its quarterly update of operator data in the country for the first quarter of 2015. The report covers the market share of the mobile operators, teledensity data, and percentage market share by technology and internet subscribers’ data.
According to a report by TechSuplex, it does not leave out the porting activities of the mobile operators, mobile peak periods tariff and the percentage contributions of the telecoms industry to GDP.
In the new numbers MTN still has the highest number of the subscribers, almost 62 million subscribers from the previous year’s 55 million subscribers. However, there has been a reduced market share percentage with a drop from 47% to 43% in just a year and half for the South Africa based telecoms giant.
Globacom climbed up from 20% to 21%, with 30.4 million, while Airtel maintains its previous percentage, 20% (29.5 million). Surprisingly, Etisalat has enjoyed the biggest climb however jumping from 13% to 16% which is 22.5 million subscribers from the previous 16 million subscribers it had.
A report on the 3rd quarter of 2013 pegged the number of Internet subscribers as 57.8 million, which is 48.6% of the total active lines. However, there has been an increase of 30.3 million totalling 88.1 million Internet subscribers. Hence, 60.1% of the total active lines now have Internet subscriptions.
However, MTN no longer accounts for 51% of the market share as recorded previously in the last NCC report. It accounts for just 46% of Internet subscriptions. This means growth for MTN has been retrogressive as given the earlier figures released by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC). Globacom has managed to remain at 22% while Airtel climbed up to 20%. This puts Etisalat at 12%.
By Pita Ochai
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