The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reported that number of inactive or unused or abandoned lines across the mobile network operators’ (MNOs) networks declined by 13% in 2022, reflecting that more subscribers activated their lines in the year.
According to the industry’s regulatory standard, a mobile line is considered to be inactive if it is not used by a subscriber to make or receive calls and/or access data services for at least 90 days.
The NCC’s just published subscriber data report showed that inactive lines on mobile networks of MTN Nigeria, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile stood at 94.4 million as of December 2022, down from 109 million recorded at the end of 2021.
Similarly, the data indicated that in the year under review, the four mobile network operators recorded a total of N316.6 million connected lines as of the end of last year, while the active lines across the networks at the end of the year totalled 2222.2 million.
Many mobile lines subscribers in the country have had to de-activate their lines in the past few years in order to meet other financial obligations as economic challenges in the country remained unabated.
Industry analysts believe that the government’s regulatory policy on the telecom subscription in early 2021 which mandated subscribers to link their mobile lines with their National Identification Number or be barred have also negatively impacted on the subscription volume.
Despite government’s announcements shifting of the deadline for the exercise several times from December 2020 through April last year, millions of mobile lines were de-activated by the MNOs based on the government’s directive.
