Active mobile voice subscriptions on the MTN, 9mobile, Airtel and Globacom networks is said to have crashed from 154.7 million in January to 140.4 million in October, 2017. This means that 4.3 million active network users have been lost within 10 months.
According to statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission on the subscribers under the GSM category, although Airtel and Globacom gained 422,925 and 190,031 new subscribers between January and October, respectively, MTN and 9mobile lost 11,528,125 and 3,400,894 subscribers, accordingly.
The statistics revealed that 9mobile started the year with 20,521,952 active subscribers and by October, it had 17,121,058 subscribers remaining on its network, representing 12.2 per cent market share.
It said that MTN’s subscriber figures dropped from 62,248,827 network users in January to 50,720,702 subscribers in October, representing 36.14 per cent market share.
The NCC statistics also showed that as a result of the reduction in the two operators’ subscriber base from January to October 2017, MTN, Nigeria’s largest telecommunications company by subscriber base, and 9mobile lost about N27.32bn potential voice revenue within the 10-month period under review.
It said that MTN Nigeria’s estimated revenue from voice calls dropped by N21.1bn based on the industry’s N1,830 Average Revenue Per User while 9mobile lost N6.22bn during the period.
MTN, in its quarterly report, had attributed the poor performance of the group’s subscriber base, which declined marginally by 0.7 per cent quarter-on-quarter to 230.2 million to lower reported subscribers in Nigeria and the disconnection of about 750, 000 subscribers in Uganda as a result of regulatory SIM registration requirements. [myad]
