Subscriber figures continue to go downhill in Nigeria following the stoppage of SIM registration and introduction of compulsory National Identification Number (NIN)-SIM integration by the Federal Government since December last year.
According to the latest figures released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), operators have lost a whopping 11.84 million subscribers in four months.
The operator lost 4.13 million active subscribers in February 2021. Total subscription stood at 195.73 million in the month.
A total of 3.38 million subscribers dropped from the networks in December 2020, the month the new policy was rolled out. In January 2021, a further 4.29 million subscribers dropped off the networks.
No porting was recorded for any of the operators ostensibly because of the directive to the operators to stop new registrations and integrate subscribers’ NINs with their SIMs.
A close look at the statistics released by the NCC showed that Airtel once again lost the highest number of subscribers in February. The operator lost 1.99 million subscribers, as it dropped from 53.42 million subscribers in January to 51.43 million subscribers in February.
MTN followed with a loss of 1.68 million subscribers. It had 79.03 million subscribers in January, but the figure fell to 77.34 million in February.
Globacom lost 415,071 subscribers, recording a total of 54.17 million subscribers as against 54.59 million users in January.
9mobile, which had 12.80 million users in January, fell to 12.77 million users in February, thereby losing a total of 35,698 subscribers.
With the current situation, Globacom remains the second largest operator by subscriber figures at 27.68 per cent market share, while Airtel holds third place with 26.28 per cent market share.
MTN remained Nigeria’s largest mobile network operator with 39.52 per cent market share. 9mobile remained the fourth operator with 6.41 per cent market share.
