Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, yesterday said active lines in the telecommunications industry increased to 142.5m in February.
This represents an increase of 1.7m users over the rate recorded in the preceding month.
The Commission, in its Monthly Subscribers Data, published on its website reported that of the 142.5m active numbers, Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM, networks service stood at 140.2m subscribers, as against the 138.5m customers in January.
Similarly, the Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA, sub-segment of the telecommunications market also recorded a surge in activities as subscribers’ number increased to 2,130,906 in the month under review, up by 21,946 subscribers over the 2,108,960 active users recorded in January
The report also indicated that the Fixed Wired/Wireless networks’ subscribers rose to 183,270 in February, representing a mere additional 223 subscribers over those registered on the networks in the preceding month.
A further analysis of subscribers’ figures showed that the connected lines in all the telecom operators’ networks dropped from 192,107,641 in January to 190,575,684 in February, signaling 1,531,957 dip.
From the total connected lines, the GSM operators were able to connect 186,410,917 in the review month, thereby slashing their connected numbers by 1,536,480 from the 187,947,397 numbers recorded in January.
The NCC reported further that CDMA networks had an extra of 2,260 to the 3,794,491 connected lines in January, leaving them with 3,796,751 connected phone numbers in February just as the Fixed Wired/Wireless operators, with 365,753 connected numbers in January, boosted their subscriber base with 2,263, making it to peak at 368,016 connected lines in February.
The monthly subscriber figures indicated that that Nigeria’s tele-density increased to 101.85 per cent in February, from the 100.59 per cent in January, representing an increase of 1.26 per cent in the Tele-density attained in February.
The Tele-density measures the percentage of a country’s population with access to telecommunications services, as determined by the subscriber base.
Nigeria’s Tele-density is currently calculated by the NCC on a population of 140 million people.
The regulatory commission also reported that 29,756 numbers ported in February.
The figure was contained in the ‘”Incoming and Outgoing Porting Activities of Mobile Network Operators’” also published by the Commission.
According to the report, there was an increase of 2,932 in the Mobile Number Portability, MNP, activities in the month of February, as against the 26,824 recorded in the preceding month.
The report added that out of the 29,756 porting activities recorded in the month, 24,955 were incoming porting activities, while 14,801 were outgoing activities.
The Commission stated that in the outgoing table, MTN lost a total of 6,951 subscribers to other networks in February, making it the worst hit during the exercise.
MTN was followed by Airtel, which lost 3,655 customers in the month under review compared to Globacom’s loss of 2,570 subscribers, while 1,625 customers of Etisalat Nigeria ported to other networks within the month.
Comparatively, in the incoming table, the report said Etisalat enjoyed the exercise most as it led with additional 9,187 customers on its network in February followed by Airtel which added 2,758 subscribers to its customer strength.1,532 subscribers moved to Globacom network, while MTN gained 1,478 customers.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has passed a total of N60.258bn as budget of the NCC for 2015 fiscal year
The House passed the budget after adopting a report by its Committee on Communications, led by Hon. Oyetunde Ojo.
A breakdown of the budget showed that N21.175bn was for capital and special projects; N16.242bn for recurrent; N10.978bn for transfer to the Federal Government, while N8.682bn is for transfer to the Universal Service Fund.
The figures indicated that the Commission projected to generate N51.250bn as revenue in the current fiscal year.
