The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator, has reported that in 2021 there was a drop in capital inflow (Foreign Direct Investment) into the Nigerian telecoms industry, decreasing from $942.863 million in 2020 to $417.481 million the following year.
The Commission, in its ‘2021 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report’ published on Friday, indicated that telecoms operators in the country generated over N3.072 billion in revenue up from the over N2.880 billion they raked in 2020, with the GSM operators recording the highest revenue of N2.774 billion in the year under revenue.
This is even as the commission reported that the telecom operators’ operating cost stood at about N1.720 billion just as their value added services expenditures totalled N10.122 billion and the expenses on collocation and infrastructure sharing stood at N2.329 billion during the year under review.
According to the report, there has been an increase in infrastructure deployment in the telecoms industry as the operating companies increased their deployment of fibre optic cable from 43,898.8km in 2020 to 47,128km in 2021.
Data from the report showed that MTN Nigeria led the infrastructure deployment ranking with 14,612 kilometres (km) followed by Airtel Nigeria which land fiber deployment and Glo, EMTS (9Mobile), and Ntel deploying 13,233km; 4,650km and 180km respectively.
The report, which was prepared by the Policy Competition and Economic Analysis Department of the NCC, the telecom operators, including the collocation and infrastructure companies, also deployed a total of 49,579 towers and 38,288 base stations during the year under review
The figures showed that microwave coverage recorded in 2021 stood at 290,940.69km, which covers the mobile and fixed operators and that the mobile, fixed and other operators recorded a total number of 99 Gateways in use in the industry as of December 2021 while fiber optics deployment stood at 86,057km (terrestrial fiber & submarine cable) as at December 2021.
The Commission further reported that as of the end of the year under review, the total submarine fiber deployment in kilometer was 27,818.3km compared to 25,128.3km deployed in 2020, representing an increase of 10.7% year-on-year.
The report by the industry regulator also reflected that the fiber deployment by four Mobile Operators comprised MTN Nigeria-17,934km; GLO- 9,800km; Airtel Nigeria and NTEL- 70km and that the operators recorded significant investment in base stations for mobile operations as the total base stations owned by mobile telecoms operating companies rose by 3.04% to 38,123 from 36,998 owned as of the end of in year 2020 nationwide.
A further analysis of the report on towers infrastructure on state-by-state basis showed that the top five states with highest number of towers were Lagos, Ogun, Oyo Rivers and FCT while the states with the least number of base stations comprised Jigawa, Ebonyi, Gombe, Yobe and Zamfara.
Specifically, the report indicated that Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, FCT, Oyo and Edo had 5,851; 2,418; 2,049; 1,944; 1,713; and 1,556 towers respectively while kebbi, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Gombe, Yobe and Zamfara recorded the deployment of 415, 367, 363, 356, 316, and 283 respectively
