Despite a
decline in the voice segment of Nigeria’s $64 billion telecommunications sector
in the first quarter, there has been an upsurge in data consumption.
According to
a Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) report obtained by The Guardian, the
industry witnessed a continuous increase in Internet usage measured in terabyte
(TB) in the first quarter of the year.
February
recorded the consumption of 22,019.66TB, March had 30,627.40TB and April saw
31,160.00TB data consumption, which was a reflection of 41.5 per cent usage
increase between February and April 2017.
Nigeria
currently has 90 million Internet users, majorly on the narrow band. There are
however, efforts by the NCC to deepen the penetration. This is even as the
country has set a 30 per cent Broadband penetration and 80 per cent ubiquitous
Internet reach by 2018.
Already, the
NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta, had disclosed that by July
the remaining five Infrastructure Companies (InFraCos) for North east; North
west; South east; South west and South south regions would have emerged out of
the 60 companies that have bided.
The five new
InFraCos would join the likes of MainOne Cables and IHS Consortium, which
already got the license for Lagos and North Central zones.
Meanwhile,
subscribers, who spoke with The Guardian are calling for 100 per cent
improvement in data services offerings, especially among the Tier I operators.
The report
also identified several factors hindering subscriptions to telecommunications
services in Nigeria.
Apart from
the daily menace of poor quality of service, which characterised major network
offerings, seasonal trends, such as travelers dropping SIMs at the end of
vacation, among others have also been identified.
The telecoms
sector services, especially the voice and data offerings, have in the last five
months suffered sharp decline in subscriptions.
Indeed, the
report showed a downward movement in Active Voice Subscription (AVS) and Active
Mobile Internet (AMI). It covered the performance of telecoms industry and
provided probable reasons for the decline in subscriptions.
According to
it, from January to April 2017, the sector lost 3.7 per cent of its voice
subscribers. From 155.1 million at the beginning of the year, it went down to
149.3 million, meaning that about 5.86 million subscriptions were lost in the
period.
Similarly,
the AMI suffered the same fate, falling from 91.5 million to 90 million,
showing a loss of 1.15 million (1.26 per cent) in quarter one.
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