MTN, Airtel, Glo and other Telco’s operating cost declined from N1.759 trillion in the year 2018 to N 1.756 trillion as at end of the year 2019. This represents a 0.2% loss within the period under review.
This was disclosed in the Nigerian Communication Commission’s Subscriber/Network Data report, which is based on the submissions received from MTN, Airtel, Glo, EMTS, Smile and Ntel among others, that was published on Tuesday.
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It is important to note that the data obtained were not limited to the GSM segment but included Fixed operators, Internet Service Providers (ISP) and other operators.
Breakdown: While MTN’s operating cost in Nigeria fell from N768.42 million in 2018 to N767.70 million in 2019, Airtel Nigeria’s cost increased from N281.89 million to N285.73 million within same period.
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Glo, EMTS, Smile and Ntel spent N162.41 million against N169.85 million, N159.80 million down to N146.94 million, N12.33 million down to N9.51 million and N14.60 million against N12.24 million respectively.
According to the report, the revenue of the Telcos increased from N 2.245 trillion in year 2018 to N 2.468 trillion as at the end of Year 2019. This represents a 9.93% increase in revenue Year on Year.
The total number of staff for responsive licensees at Year end 2019 stands at 14,828 staff composition.
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For instance, the total number of Staff reported by the Mobile operators (MTN, GLO, Airtel, EMTS, Smile and Ntel) as at December, 2019 was a total of 7,750 recording.
They are 189 expatriates and 7,561 Nigerians. Further breakdown in this category as revealed by NCC, showed that 4,986 of the Nigerian Staff are Male while the outstanding 2,575 are female. Similarly, 185 are male expatriates and 4 are female expatriates.
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Towers across states
The report revealed that the top five states with highest number of towers are Lagos- 9,860; Ogun- 3,398; Rivers- 3,329; FCT- 3,034 and Oyo- 2,842; while the states with the least number of base stations are: Jigawa-316; Yobe- 422; Zamfara- 434; Gombe 521- and Kebbi- 561.
What it means: The number of existing base stations in the country invariably affects the quality of service (QOS) within the country thereby positively impacting the level of telephone penetration within the nation, which equates to attracting foreign investment and growth in the telecoms industry.