The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has reported a sharp drop totalling 1,105,758 in the number of telecom subscribers in December 2015. The Commission’s monthly report for the month also showed that the GSM operators had not been consistent in growing their subscribers’ base in the last three months of 2015 falling and rising in most cases.
In September, the figure, which represents the numbers of active lines on the network of the GSM operators showed that it increased from 148,427,043 to 149,683,259 October and then from 149,683,259 in October to 149,787,120 in November before falling to 148,681,362 in December. Although the report did not give reasons for the fall in the subscribers’ base of the operators, it was however gathered that the deactivation of most SIM card by the operators may be responsible as a huge numbers of SIM card were no longer active in the network of the operators.
The short fall in the subscribers’ base as reflected in the tele-density of the showed that the tele-density of the country’s telecommunications industry decreased to 107.87 per cent in December, from 108.66 per cent in the month of November. The tele-density statistics measure the percentage of Nigeria’s population with access to telecommunications services, as determined from the subscriber base and it is calculated by the NCC on a population of 140 million people.
The monthly subscriber data showed that the Fixed Wired/ Wireless networks’ consumers increased to 187,155 in December, as they added 383 customers to their record of 186,772 in November. For the Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA, For the Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA, with only one surviving operator, which has been acquired by MTN Nigeria, the story is the same as the figures revealed that a 393 subscriber loss as it decreased from 2,149,120 in November to 2,148,727 in December.