The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reported that 5G subscriptions in the country increased to 2.3 million in December 2023.
The latest data from the telecoms industry regulator on the cadres of network deployment by the mobile network operators (MNOs) showed that despite the gradual migration of their networks to global best standards, the 5G network represented a meres 1.04% of the country’s 124.7 million total active subscriptions for telephone services at the end of 2023.
Currently, only three of the MNOs, namely MTN, Airtel, and Mafab Communications have rolled out 5G network in the country.
It would be recalled that MTN launched the first 5G network in the country in September 2022 and was followed by Airtel, which launched its 5G in June 2023. Mafab Communications, which secured its 5G network licence at the same time when MTN got licensed for the 5G network roll out, did not start rolling out its 5G service until late 2023 through the sale of routers.
Available data on the 5G network roll out indicated that MTN initially rolled out its 5G service in seven major cities comprising Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Kano, and Maiduguri and is currently deepening the deployment nationwide.
When Airtel launched the service in June last year, it flagged off the roll out in Lagos, Abuja, Rivers, and Ogun State with a promise to roll out in six more states within the first year of the launch.
Also, which Mafab which launched its 5G service in Abuja towards the end of 2023 projected that within one year, it would roll out the service under the first phase in six cities, in compliance with the rollout obligations spelt out in the licensing document.
According to the industry regulator, majority of the telephone lines in Nigeria are still on 2G, which accounted for 57.84% of all connections as of December 2023.
A further analysis of the telecom industry’s statistics reflected that 9.80% of the almost 225 million subscriptions were on 3G, while subscriptions for 4G, which the operators started rolling out in 2016, still stood at 31.33% as of December.
The low rate of higher network subscriptions by consumers in the country has been attributed partly to the high cost of smartphones due to surging inflation rate, thereby disenabling millions of subscribers to migrate to higher grade of networks, particularly the 5G.
