MTN, Glo, Airtel, Others Gain 10.3 Million Subscribers in Six Months
While the COVID-19 pandemic spelled doom for some businesses, it is a blessing for the telecommunication, it is obvious the world is changing in a faster-paced movement, with everything going digital and this simply means internet or cyber network providing companies stand a chance to profit more now and into the future.
Here is a brief analysis of how this season turned out to be a blessing for Nigeria’s largest service providers and the upcoming ones.
Within the period of six months the active mobile voice subscriptions on the MTN, 9mobile, Airtel and Globacom networks rose from 185,742,016 in January to 196,039,869 in June 2020.
This shows that 10.3 million active network users have been added within six months, according to statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission on the subscribers under the GSM category.
Airtel and Globacom gained 2.46 million and 818,346 new subscribers between January and June respectively. Also, MTN added 8.06 million new users to its network in the six months under review. Only 9mobile lost subscribers amounting to 1.05 million from January to June 2020.
Airtel started the year with 49.99 million active phone users and by June, it had 52.46 million subscribers on its network. MTN’s subscriber figures increased from 70.69 million network users in January to 78.75 million subscribers in June.
Globacom, which had 51.76 million subscribers in January this year, gained new ones to reach 52.57 million by the end of June 2020. 9mobile had 13.16 million phone users in January but its number of active subscribers dropped to 12.11 million by the end of June this year.
At the end of June, the four mobile network operators maintained their ranking and market share with MTN leading the industry with the highest market share of 40.17 percent.
Globacom ranked second and had a 26.82 percent market share; Airtel ranked third with 26.76 percent and 9mobile with 6.18 percent market share.
The NCC report indicated that the telecom industry gained a total of 14.96 million new users in six months, from January to June. By the end of June, the industry statistics showed that the telcos’ Internet users had reached 143.32 million from 128.37 million subscribers in January.
MTN, in its half-year financial report, had said despite a change in traffic pattern during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it recorded voice revenue growth of 2.8 percent. The telecom company said revenue from digital and fintech services rose by 121.8 percent and 29.6 percent respectively.
In the first half of the year, MTN said it achieved 6.8 million in net additions to connect over 71.1 million customers to its network and connected 3.8 million new users to the Internet, bringing its active data subscribers to 29 million.
In line with the growing number of subscribers on its network, Airtel Nigeria also in its half-year financial report disclosed 17.1 percent of revenue growth in constant currency.
The company said a slowdown in revenue growth during the quarter was driven by the restriction on movements imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted customer usage, particularly invoice.
Voice revenue, according to the company, increased 6.9 per cent to $197m, which was supported by a 13.5 percent increase in the customer base and was partially offset by a 4.6 percent drop in voice Average Revenue Per User.
Ayooluwa Joshua