By Dipo Olowookere
The management of MTN Nigeria has announced the introduction of a new 17-digit recharge card Personal Identification Number (PIN).
In 2016, the nation’s largest telecommunications company increased the number of its recharge voucher digits from 12 to 16.
Two years later, the firm is increasing the digits to 17.
According to MTN Nigeria, the value on the 17-digit recharge cards and the 16-digit recharge vouchers remain the same.
However, in its adverts to sensitise its subscribers on the new development, the company did not give reasons for the change.
MTN Nigeria is part of the MTN Group, Africa’s leading cellular telecommunications company. On May 16, 2001, MTN became the first GSM network to make a call following the globally lauded Nigerian GSM auction conducted by the Nigerian Communications Commission earlier in the year. Thereafter the company launched full commercial operations beginning with Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
MTN paid $285m for one of four GSM licenses in Nigeria in January 2001. To date, in excess of $1.8 billion has been invested building mobile telecommunications infrastructure in Nigeria.
Since launch in August 2001, MTN has steadily deployed its services across Nigeria. It now provides services in 223 cities and towns, more than 10,000 villages and communities and a growing number of highways across the country, spanning the 36 states of the Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Many of these villages and communities are being connected to the world of telecommunications for the first time ever.
Aduragbemi Omiyale 
Adedapo Adesanya