Nigeria's total active voice subscription declines 6.12% year-on-year in Q4 2017

Data from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics released Wednesday, February 21, 2017, indicates that the country’s total active voice subscriptions took a downward trend in the fourth quarter of 2017.

The NBS stated that subscriptions decreased by 6.12 percent to 145,065,953 subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2017 from 154,529,780 in the corresponding quarter of 2016.

However, the data indicated a 3.69 percent increase quarter-on-quarter from the third quarter of 2017, where a total of 140 million active voice subscriptions and 93.26 million active internet subscriptions were recorded.

GSM subscription remained the largest component of the total active mobile subscription over the past year, according to the report, stating that as at the end of the fourth quarter of 2017, Nigeria recorded 144,640,677 GMS-based active voice subscriptions nationwide.

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The bureau, however, stated that other technologies of voice telecommunication, which include CDMA, fixed wires/wireless, and VoIP constitute around 0.29 percent of the total active voice subscription in the review period.

Specifically, CDMA contributed 0.16 percent of the total active subscriptions, fixed/ fixed wireless and VoIP accounted for 0.10 percent and 0.03 percent of the total figures respectively.

The report stated that the four largest voice communication providers in the fourth quarter were MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9Mobile.

MTN had the highest contribution of 36.14 percent followed by Globacom with 26.39 percent, while Airtel and 9Mobile contributed 25.74 percent and 11.72 percent respectively.

While Airtel, 9mobile (EMTS) and MTN only specialize in GSM technology, Globacom operates both in the GSM and fixed/fixed wireless telecommunication technology space.

According to the report, states in the South/West region recorded the highest active voice subscriptions with a total of 44,465,508.

Lagos, Ogun, and Oyo as the top three states in the fourth quarter jointly accounted for 25.06 percent of the total voice subscription of the country.

NBS noted that Lagos led the pack with 19,417,181 total active voice subscribers with 19,118,767 GSM users by the end of the quarter, equaling 13.18 percent of the total nationwide subscriptions.

Kano, Kaduna, and Rivers established another cluster of heavy voice subscription with 7,382,805, 6,642,801 and 5,456,860 active voice subscription respectively, while Bayelsa state accounted for the lowest number in the quarter under review, with 954,353.