Nigeria’s mobile subscriptions declined by 2.5 million in April, leaving a dent in the country’s march towards mobile inclusion for all.
The most recent industry data the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) provided demonstrated this.
This drop happened after the number of mobile subscribers hit an all-time high of 227.17 million in February of the same year. Since then, the numbers have slowly gone down, which is a worrying trend for the nation’s mobile connectivity.
In MTN Nigeria’s first-quarter report, Chief Executive Officer Karl Toriola talked about how global financial conditions, inflation, and cash shortages affect the company’s customers.
Toriola said that these factors, along with problems like gasoline and cash shortages in the area, had put more pressure on the economy, consumers, and companies.
“We kept running into problems in the first quarter of 2023,” the company said. Local gasoline and cash shortages worsened the effects of global macroeconomic and military changes on energy, food, and general inflation. This made things harder for the economy, consumers, and companies.
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Mobile subscriptions dropped; why?
According to new figures from the Nigerian Communications Commission, the number of mobile subscribers fell to 225.82 million in March and then fell even more to 233.34 million in April. This is also the first time since June 2021 that the number of people who have a mobile subscription has regularly gone down.
As required by the government, SIM cards that were not linked to a National Identification Number (NIN) were taken away. This caused the number of cell subscriptions to drop. According to information from the operators, MTN Nigeria lost the most subscribers, 2.8 million, which made a big difference in the total drop.
As of February 2023, users had not used 96.8 million of the 323.6 million registered Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. This number of unused cell lines was 29.9% of all registered SIMs. This has hurt telcos’ ability to make money in the first quarter of 2023 because they won’t be able to make money from unused SIM cards that are meant to subscribe to both voice calls and data.
Despite losing subscribers for three months, MTN Nigeria is the country’s largest mobile network operator. Active subscriptions declined from 92.71 million to 88.68 million.
The number of active telephone connections per 100 residents in a region decreased as a result of the decline in regularly connected lines across the nation. April’s teledensity was 117.17%, down from March’s 118.48%. The NCC estimates 190 million people.
Competitors’ performance
Glo maintained its second-largest subscriber base with a 128,017 monthly subscription growth. Glo gained 60.9 million subscribers in April, up from 60.7 million in March.
Airtel’s database saw a slight increase of 3,285 subscriptions, bringing the total number of subscriptions in April to 60.33 million from 60.32 million in March.
In April, 9Mobile’s database rose by 262,737 members. The overall number of active accounts increased from 13.1 million in March to 13.4 million in April.
In November 2020, all Nigerian networks had 207.5 million subscribers. From December 2020 to August 2021, membership dropped to 188.9 million. The carriers’ subscribers have grown during the past 18 months.