Telecom regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said that telecommunications operators in the country lost a total of 3.3 million active subscribers in December.
Recall that the Federal Government, through the NCC, directed telecommunications companies in the country to suspend the sales and reactivation of new SIM cards last December.
The instruction was tied to NCC’s intention to audit the country’s subscriber registration database.
Figures released by the regulator showed that the number of active subscribers for the month of December stood at 204.22 million down from 207.53 million in November.
Airtel accounted for the bulk of the loss, dropping by 1.58 million subscribers from 57.23 million subscribers in November to 55.64 million customers. Airtel is the country’s second largest operator with 27.25 per cent of market share.
MTN dropped to 80.76 million mobile phone users from 82.02 million consumers in November, thereby losing a total of 1.26 million subscribers.
Still, MTN holds on to the largest share of subscribers in Nigeria at 39.55 per cent.
Globacom, the number three operator in Nigeria by subscriber number, lost 249,194 subscribers in December, recording a total of 54.84 million subscribers as against 55.08 million GSM users in November.
The fourth operator with 6.36 per cent market share, 9mobile, lost the least number of subscribers, 205,910. From 13.18 million users in November, it dropped to 12.98 million users in December.
