By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said the four major mobile telecommunications operators in the country – MTN, Glo, Airtel, 9Mobile, grew their subscribers base by 0.1 per cent or 195,313 in the month of July 2021.
The industry statistics report by the commission showed that the total number of subscribers in July grew to 187,470,860 from 187,275,547 in June 2021.
It attributed the marginal growth to the lifting of a ban on the sale and activation of new SIM cards in April 2021 by the federal government.
After months of not being able to register new SIM cards, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr Isa Ali Pantami, lifted the embargo, noting that it was in line with the Revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM Card Registration.
Giving the breakdown of the number of active subscribers for telephony services on each of the licensed service providers in July, the telecommunications industry regulator noted that MTN led with a total of 73,123,732.
This was followed by the indigenous service provider – Glo which had 51,137,799 active subscribers, and Airtel with 50,301,237 followed by 9mobile with 12,908,092 active subscribers.
However, broadband penetration dropped to 39.8 per cent in July from 39.9 per cent in June 2021, while internet subscriptions decreased further to 139.7 million in July from 140.2 million in June.
The Internet subscription report released by the commission is a combination of Mobile (GSM), fixed wired line, Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technologies.
According to an Industry report from the NCC, Mobile (GSM) dropped to139,384,180 in July from 139,814,91 3 in June, while fixed-wired line increased to 13,946 from 12,188, with VoIP declining to 346,054 from 348,068 in June.
Aduragbemi Omiyale