Active telephone lines drop to 120.3 million

The number of active telephone lines in the country fell to 120,362,218 in June, a decline of 386,536 from the 120,748,754 recorded in May, according to the latest statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission on Monday.


The number for March and April was put at 117,281,669 and 119,356,665 by the NCC.

The Code Division Multiple Access subscribers were the worst hit following a drop from 2,703,604 active lines in May to 2,567,177 in June.

For the Global System of Mobile telecommunication operators, MTN maintained its lead with 55,238,430 active lines, followed by Globacom, 25,019,862; Airtel, 21,591,904; and Etisalat, 15,303,647.

According to the NCC, the percentage of GSM, CDMA and fixed/fixed wireless lines are 97.55 per cent, 2.13 per cent and 0.32 per cent, respectively.

The teledensity also dropped from 86.25 as of May 2013 to 85.25 in the period under review. Teledensity is the percentage of connected lines in relation to the population at a given period of time, and its growth is proportionate to the growth in the subscriber base.

Based on an Average Revenue per User of $7 (N1,090.25), the active telecoms subscribers in the country must have spent about N379.8bn on voice calls and Short Message Services in the first quarter of the year.

The 117,281,669 active subscribers as of March were said to have boosted the coffers of the telecoms service providers by over N127.8bn; while for February and January, when the subscriber base was 116,601,637 and 114,492,384, respectively, the telecoms firms made estimated N127.1bn and N124.8bn for the periods.

The ARPU is a financial performance benchmark in the telecoms industry that measures the average monthly or yearly revenue generated by the GSM, CDMA and fixed telephone operators in a particular country.

Nigeria’s average teledensity for the first quarter of the year was 82.9 per cent from the subscriber data provided by the NCC.

The industry ended 2012 with a combined subscriber base of 113.1 million, up from 95.8 million active subscriptions in January of the same year.

According to the NCC data, only the GSM the operators contributed to the addition in subscriber base, as the CDMA and fixed line operators recorded declines in the first quarter.