National Bureau of Statistic has said that Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states are the top three states that recorded the highest voice GSM subscription in the country with a combine 26.10 per cent of the total GSM subscription in the country. According to NBS “Lagos led in telecommunication usage with 20,393,052 active voice subscriptions and 20,126,338 GSM users by the end of the third quarter, equaling to 14.58 per cent of the total nationwide subscriptions.
“Following the three southern states, FCT, Kano and Kaduna established another cluster of heavy voice subscription, each of which reported over 6 million active voice subscriptions in the reviewing quarter.Most states in Nigeria recorded negative growths in active voice subscriptions in the third quarter of 2017 on both year to year and quarter to quarter basis. FTC, Edo, Adamawa, Ondo, Lagos and Oyo are the only states which recorded positive year on year growths in active voice subscriptions in 2017 third quarter by 5.48 per cent, 3.10 per cent, 2.42 per cent, 1.63% and 0.98 per cent respectively.”
National Bureau of Statistic NBS in its report said that the total active voice subscriptions in the third quarter of 2017 decreased by 8.73 per cent compared with the same quarter of last year, from 153,295,152 in the third quarter of 2016 to 139,907,213 total active subscriptions in the reviewing quarter. The total figure recorded in the 2017 third quarter also indicates an 2.21 per cent decline from the second quarter of 2017.
The NBS said “GSM subscription remained the largest component in Total Active Mobile Subscription over the past year. Until the end of the third quarter of 2017, Nigeria recorded 139,486,833 GMS based active voice subscriptions nationwide. However, both the subscription number and the percentage of GSM decreased in the past three quarters, although GSM still constitutes 99.70 per cent of the total Active Voice Subscription. Total GSM in third quarter recorded a 9.50 per cent decline year on year and a 2.22 per cent decline quarter to quarter. Other technology of voice telecommunication includes CDMA, Fixed Wires/Wireless, and VoIP, which constitute around 0.30 per cent of the total Active Voice Subscription in 2017 Q3. CDMA as an alternative mobile technology contributes to 0.16 per cent of the total active subscriptions while fixed/ fixed wireless and VoIP only accounted for 0.10 per cent and 0.04 per cent of the total figures respectively.
“In the third quarter, the four largest voice communication providers are Airtel Nigeria, 9mobile, Globacom Limited and MTN Nigeria Communications, which contributed to 24.75 per cent, 12.30 per cent, 27.70 per cent and 35.96 per cent of the total telecom communication subscriptions respectively. Among the top four, Airtel Nigeria ,9mobile and MTN Nigeria Communications only specialise in GSM, while Globacom Limited also hold 0.01 per cent of the total active voice subscriptions in the form of Fixed/Fixed Wireless Telecommunication.“
According to NBS “Data subscriptions in Q3 2017, as in previous quarters, is dominated by mobile (GSM) internet subscriptions, accounting for 99.7 per cent of all active data/internet subscriptions. In the quarter under review, Q3 2017, total active internet subscriptions stood at 93,263,436, a 1.22 per cent growth over the previous quarter’s 92,136,023 active subscriptions, and a decline of 0.55 per cent from the same period last year, Q3 2016 at 93,776,771 active subscriptions. The recent growth in active internet subscriptions is driven primarily by the quarter-on-quarter growth in absolute numbers of subscriptions to the internet via GSM (mobile) and the increase in VoIP (voice-over-internet) usage.
“GSM remains the most dominant means of accessing the internet for subscribers. In Q3 2017, active GSM internet subscriptions stood at 92,975,682, representing a 1.5 per cent growth from the previous quarter’s 91,598,755 active subscribers, and a 0.22% decline from the same period last year. While GSM internet subscriptions were on a declining trend over year to date 2016, subscriptions have picked up in 2017, showing a 3.3 per cent growth from Q1 2017 to Q3 2017.
“In the quarter under review (Q3 2017) MTN gained the highest share of all GSM active internet subscribers, capturing 35 per cent of subscriptions (32,556,629), closely followed by Glo at 29 per cent of subscription (26,942,871), Airtel at 23.4 per cent of subscriptions (21,765,524), and EMTS at 12.6 per cent of subscriptions (11,710,259). This represented a 2.7 per cent, and a 7.9 per cent growth over the previous quarter (Q2 2017) for MTN and Airtel respectively, and a 0.9 per cent and 6.7 per cent decline over the previous quarter for Glo and EMTS respectively. The biggest contributors to the growth of total active GSM internet subscription is Airtel, growing 7.9 per cent when compared to the previous quarter (Q2 2017), and 15.6 per cent when compared to the same period last year (Q3 2016). This led to an increase of the company’s market share by 1.4 points from the previous quarter and by 3.2 points from the same period last year” the NBS report said.
