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Latest telecommunications industry statistics released by the regulator – the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) – shows the country’s total active mobile subscriptions rose to 189 million as of August 2021.
By implication, active mobile subscriptions across the networks of MTN, GLobacom, Airtel, and 9mobile increased by 1.5 million in August compared to 187.5 million recorded in July.
The August record is the highest in the last five months when the mobile network operators recorded 192,413,613 in March this year.
Recall that since the moves by the Federal Government of Nigeria to implement policy on SIM card and National Identification Number (NIN) integration, the MNOs has reported decrease in new Sim registrations.
The singular policy move caused the operators over 20 million subscriptions between December 2020 and April 2021.
Active mobile subscriptions across the four networks, which stood at 207.5 million as of November 2020, had plunged to 186.6 million by May this year.
The teledensity as at August is 99.18% (From March 2019, teledensity is calculated based on a population estimate of 190 million, up from 140 million).
According to the NCC’s data, MTN, which is the largest operator by subscriber number, gained 9,598 new subscriptions in the month.
This brought its total active customer database to 73.1 million. Globacom added 845,467 new subscriptions in August to retain its position as the second-largest operator. The telco’s active customer database rose to 51.9 million at the end of the month.
Source: NCC.gov.ng
Airtel also activated a total of 558,787 new lines in the month under review to record 50.8 million total subscriptions.
Also, 9mobile gained 113,087 new subscriptions. This pushed up the telco’s total subscriptions to 13.02 million from the 12.9 million it recorded in the previous month.
With the growth recorded by the operators, the country’s teledensity, which measures the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area, also increased to 100.72 per cent jumped to 99.18 per cent from 98.39 per cent recorded in July.
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