The active mobile subscriptions for Nigeria’s telecommunication service providers like MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile rose to 225.8 million in January 2023.
This is according to the latest industry data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
This represents 1.7% growth in the month when compared to the 222 million subscriptions the country had as of December 2022.
The data shows that the growth was driven largely by MTN, which recorded the highest gain of 2.9 million subscriptions in the month. In total, the 4 GSM operators recorded a combined 3.8 million increase in subscriptions in January.
Teledensity growth: 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 jumped from 116.60% in December 2022 to 118.51% in January 2023. According to NCC, the teledensity is calculated based on a population estimate of 190 million.
How the telcos fared: The NCC’s statistics show that MTN, which is the largest operator by subscriber number, gained 2.9 million new subscriptions in January. This brought its total active customer database to 91.9 from the 89 million it recorded in January 2022.
- Airtel added 497,863 new subscriptions in the month under review, which helped the telecom company to displace Glo from the second position in terms of subscription number. The telco’s active customer database rose to 60.5 million at the end of January from the 60 million it recorded in December 2022.
- Glo also recorded 44, 522 increase in subscriptions in the month but relinquished its position as the second-largest operator to Airtel. The new activations on the network brought Glo’s total subscriptions to 60.3 million from the 60.29 million it recorded in December 2022.
- 9mobile recorded subscriptions increase in the month as its database grew by 178,879. This brought its total active subscriptions to 12.8 million in December 2022.