Zinox to link S’East LGAs with 1,314kms of fibre cable
By Adeyemi Adepetun
About 5.78 million Internet users lost access to the net from December 2020 to February 2021, statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed
The February statistics released by NCC showed that the Internet user base, which was 154.3 million, dropped to 151.3 million in January and 148.5 million by February end.
MTN, which had 65.4 million Internet users as of December 2020, lost 2.6 million while Airtel fell from 41.3 million users in December 2020 to 38.9 million as of February, losing 2.4 million. 9mobile lost about 500,000 users. It fell from 7.1 million to 6.6 million, while Globacom, which had 40.1 million users by December 2020, lost about 400,000 lines, to end February with 39.7 million users.
Industry watchers have attributed the drop in general telecoms subscriptionS and Internet users to the Federal Government directive on NIN-SIM registration, verification, and linking, in which operators have been barred from activating and reactivating both new and old SIM car
Within the period, many telecoms users lost their SIMs, and have not been able to retrieve the lines. Generally, within the three months (December, January, and February), about 8.4 million telephone lines have become inactive, resulting in a drop in the country’s teledensity. Within this period, teledensity, which was 107 per cent in December 2020, fell by 4.42 per cent to 102.7 per cent as of February.
Interestingly, the impact of the FG’s directive appeared to be more pronounced on some operators than the others. For instance, Airtel, which has maintained the second largest operator after MTN in Nigeria for the past six months, appeared to have lost that position to Globacom.
NCC statistics showed that Airtel, which serviced 55.6 million customers as of December 2020, has lost 4.2 million users, to end February with 51.4 million users. Airtel penetration in the country dropped to 26.3 per cent.
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