Nigeria’s mobile phone subscription jumps 4.2m in August to 203,529,809

Saviour Adugba

• MTN maintains position as the biggest market shareholder
• As teledensity up by 2%
• Broadband penetration hits 43.30%

The number of mobile telecommunications subscribers in Nigeria has grown by 4,222,018 new subscriptions for the month of August, according to statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the industry regulator.

The NCC statistics show that MTN remains the largest player in the Nigeria telecoms industry by market share, with the South African majority-owned company growing their subscriber base to 83.084 million in August, which represents 40.90 per cent of the market.

Airtel comes next, slightly beating GLO to the second position in terms of market share, as it boasts 26.96 per cent share of the market with 54.767 million subscribers. GLO is the third biggest player in the industry with 52.934 million subscribers, which account for 26.06 per cent of the market share. EMTS, doing business as 9mobile, has the least share of the market 12.378 million subscribers, accounting for 6.09 per cent of the market.

In the same vein, the country’s teledensity has also grown by approximately 2 per cent, jumping from 104.41 per cent in July to 106.62 in August.

Teledensity means the number of telephone connections per 100 people in a given location. It differs between nations, states and various locations

Meanwhile, Nigeria also added about two million new broadband subscriptions as the sector saw broadband subscriptions grow from 80.216 million subscribers in July to 82.653 million subscriptions in August, meaning that Nigeria’s broadband penetration saw a 1.28 percent growth, rising from 42.02 per cent in July to 43.30 per cent in August.

Broadband subscription has seen a month on month growth throughout 2020, only taking a dip only in April when broadband penetration contracted from 39.85 per cent in March to 39.54 per cent.