The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) at the weekend reported that Nigeria’s active subscriptions for telecommunications services in the four mobile networks of MTN, Airtel, Glo (Globacom), and 9Mobile increased to 222 million at the end of 2022, indicating a 14% growth above the 195 million subscriptions in December 2021.
The telecom industry regulatory commission, in its latest industry data attributed the high surge in subscriptions largely to new subscribers that joined the MTN network, thereby raising the telco’s users by 15.4 million, the highest among the mobile networks operators (MNOs) in the country.
According to the commission, the four MNOs recorded a combined 27 million increase in subscriptions in the year under review.
The NCC’s latest data on how the telecom operators fared in 2022 showed that with MTN’s 15.4 million new subscriptions during the year, its total active customer database rose to 89 million from the 73.5 million it recorded in December 2021.
Similarly, Airtel added 6.1 million new subscriptions to its network in the year under review, thereby raising the telco’s active customer database to 60 million from the 53.9 million it recorded in December 2021.
Globacom also recorded additional subscriptions of 5.3 million in the year to maintain its position as the second-largest operator. At the end of 2022, Glo’s total subscriptions stood at 60.3 million from the 54.9 million it recorded in December 2021.
The data also showed that 9Mobile recorded a marginal growth in the year as its subscription database rose by 63,362 to 12.8 million in December 2022.
The industry regulator further reported that with the improvements in telecom subscriptions in 2022, the country’s teledensity, which measures the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area, also rose from 102.40% in December 2021 to 116.60% in December 2022.
