The latest data from the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) shows that active mobile lines in Nigeria increased by 2 per cent month-on-month to 157.6 million in October 2024.
The growth in October ended the monthly drop in mobile line subscriptions that started in March 2024 due to the NIN-SIM linkage exercise imposed by the sector regulator.
As a result, all unlinked SIM cards were disabled, significantly reducing active mobile lines, and leading to telcos losing a considerable number of subscribers.
The data also showed that internet connections grew slightly by 1 per cent month-on-month to 134.2 million.
MTN Nigeria retained the largest market share, accounting for about 51 per cent of total subscriptions, relatively unchanged from September’s market share position.
Airtel followed closely with a market share of 35 per cent while Globacom came third with a subscriber market share of 12 per cent, with 9Mobile (formerly Etisalat) accounting for a low market share of 2 per cent.
In terms of customer additions, MTN Nigeria recorded the most significant increase as it gained about 2.3 million or 2.9 per cent customers month-on-month bringing its total customer base of 80.4 million.
Airtel came second with a subscriber addition of about 697,000 users in October, taking its customer base to 54.4 million.
9Mobile, once a darling network in Nigeria, suffered the largest attrition, with subscriber losses of 6.7 per cent or 245,000 month-on-month users to 3.4 million.
Globacom’s customer base declined by 45,000 lines to 19.1 million during the period under review.
The telecommunication sector has remained resilient despite the challenging business environment which has seen returns eroded by rising operational expenses as well as the volatile exchange rate.
In the latest third quarter of 2024 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the telecommunication sector contributed in real terms to the country by 13.94 per cent.
However, contributions of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector to real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Q3 2024 declined by 3.43 per cent.
It increased from 19.78 per cent in Q2 2024 to 16.35 per cent in the third quarter of the year.