Active subscriptions for the internet across mobile, fixed, and VOIP networks in Nigeria declined to 141.1 million in June this year.
According to the latest industry statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), this represents a 0.3% decline when compared with the 141.5 million recorded in May.
The NCC’s data reveals that the mobile network operators MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and T2 (9mobile) maintained their dominance of the internet market with 140.6 million subscriptions.
This left ISPs and others with 528,633 subscriptions at the end of June.
Data usage slightly increased
Despite the decline in subscriptions, data consumption by subscribers maintained its upward trajectory. According to the NCC data, Nigerians consumed 1.044 million terabytes of data in June, slightly higher than the 1.043 terabytes recorded in May.
- Going by the NCC data, the May data consumption figure came as the highest monthly record since January 2023, when the telecom regulator started publishing the data.
- The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Dinesh Balsingh, at a recent media roundtable, confirmed that telcos are seeing a surge in data consumption, a development the operators are responding to by investing more in expanding their capacity.
- According to Balsingh, the exponential explosion of data usage across Nigerian cities, particularly Lagos, continues to drive bandwidth consumption at unprecedented rates.
“Cities like Lagos are growing at lightning speed, more people, more businesses, more devices,” he said.
Active mobile subscriptions down
Meanwhile, total active subscriptions across the four mobile networks also declined in June, dropping to 171.5 million from 172.4 million recorded in May.
However, the decline was driven mainly by MTN. While MTN remains the largest operator by subscriber number, its active subscriptions declined by 1 million to 89.2 million from 90.2 million in May.
- 9mobile (now T2), the distant 4th operator, which recently signed a landmark deal to leverage MTN’s infrastructure, also lost 236,238 subscriptions in the month. This brought its database to 2.4 million from 2.6 million recorded in May.
- Conversely, Airtel gained 36,316 subscriptions in the month, pushing its database to 58.9 million. Globacom recorded the highest gain for the month as it added 263,028 new subscriptions, which brought its database to 20.8 million from 20.6 million recorded in the preceding month.
- Despite the loss recorded in May, MTN accounted for 52.03% of the mobile market share in Nigeria, while Airtel maintained the second position with 34.38%.
- Globacom’s market share stood at 12.18%, while 9mobile accounted for only 1.42% of the pie.
Meanwhile, with the decline in actively connected lines recorded by the operators, the country’s teledensity, which measures the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area, also declined to 79.22% from 79.65% recorded in May.
