For the first time in months, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced a drop in the Nigerian telecoms subscriber numbers. According to the recent numbers put up by NCC on its website today, the number of telecom subscribers was 150,660,631 as at September 2015. This is a drop when compared to the August number of 151,018,624.
Teledensity all fell from 107.87 in August to 107.61 in September 2015 and is calculated on a population of 140million.
The market share shows that MTN Nigeria is still leading the pack with 42% while Globacom and Airtel are neck to neck at 21%. Etisalat comes after with 16%. Porting data shows Etisalat as the net gainer with 12,898 out of the total of 20,394 subscribers. Airtel is second with 5347 subscribers
The drop is not unconnected with the directive from NCC to deactivate all unregistered SIMs. A further drop might happen in October as the drop of 357,993 is not reminiscent of the NCC claim as it recently fined MTN Nigeria of not complying with the order of deactivating all unregistered SIMs. The fine of $5.2 billion is for about 5 million SIMs.
Even though NCC has not said anything about the other telcos, a decent number is also expected to be disconnected.
