Telephone lines hit 169m; 127m active -NCC
Nigerian telecoms sector has recorded a huge figure of 169million connected telephone lines but out of which only 127million are active.
According to the latest subscribers statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for February 2014, the figures which covered Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and the fixed wired/wireless lines operators also indicated that total installed capacity increased from 226.6 million by January 2013 to 248.4 million by the end of last year.
According to the statistics which are available on the regulator’s website, the GSM operators, including MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat, connected 159 million lines with 124 million active while CDMA operators had a connection of 7.6 million lines with only 2.4 million lines active.
The fixed wired/wireless operators connected 2.3 million lines with only 360,537 lines left active.
Also, Nigeria recorded growth in its teledensity, from 81.7 per cent in January 2013 to 91.1 per cent by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, GSM networks were the major source of access to the internet with 96.3 per cent increase in internet access through GSM in the last year in Nigeria.
The latest data from NCC indicated a current figure of 63.47million recorded for February 2014 compared to 32.34 million recorded for same period in 2013 across the four major GSM operators; Airtel, Etisalat, Globacom and MTN.
MTN with the largest subscribers provided internet access to 32.8million on its network followed by Globacom 14.9, Airtel 9.6million and 6.1million for Etisalat.
For 2013, the figures were given as Airtel, 5.9 million; Etisalat, 4.3 million; Globacom, 0.78 million; and MTN, 21.3 million.
Buttressing the NCC statistics was a recent report released by market research and statistics specialists, digitXplus, the digital unit of Mediareach OMD Nigeria, showed that the country recorded a 200 per cent growth in Internet users between 2009 and 2013.