Competition Intensifies as telcos lose 121,154 customers in MNP

Epileptic services both in voice and data offering in 2019, which saw, especially prices of data reducing by as much as 70 per cent, must have caused some subscribers to dump their networks for another.    

According to reports, 121,154 customers ported from their network providers in search of improved quality of service.  

Statistics obtained from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), showed that the quartet of MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9Mobile lost 121, 154 subscribers, but accommodated 139, 021 in terms of those who ported into their networks. 

Introduced in Nigeria by NCC on April 22, 2013, Mobile Number Portability (MNP), is a semi-permanent means of moving a telephone number from one provider to another, and usually involves closing the old account. It enables mobile telephone users to retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network carrier to another.  

NCC in its released guidelines for MNP, made migration free of charge for subscribers, but insisted that subscribers could only change networks once every 90 days.  

Further analysis of the statistics showed that in the whole of 2019, Airtel was mostly affected with about 49, 867 subscribers porting to other networks. Airtel was followed by Globacom, which lost 32,327 customers. MTN and9Mobile lost 19, 535 and 19,425 subscribers respectively.  

But in terms of subscribers who ported into the networks, 9Mobile had the highest figure with 77, 492 telephone users who preferred the network over others. Airtel came second with some 30,026 customers coming in. MTN is third with 23, 851 users, while Globacom was only able to attract 7,653 subscribers. 

Despite accruing a good number of customers through porting in the course of 2019, the figure failed to lift 9Mobile, as it went down further from-3.95 per cent in Q3 to -11.03 per cent in Q4.    

Generally, some 10.7 million lines were added to Nigeria’s telephone network in 2019. This made the country to finish the year with 184.7 million active telephone subscriptions. This resulted in 96.8 per cent teledensity penetration.   

Nigeria, which started the year with 174 million subscribers, deepened broadband by 37.8 per cent with some 72 million people now claimed to be having access.   

MNOs and Fixed Wired operators increased Internet users by 11.7 million, which made the country to end the 2019 with 126million online population.    

The statistics showed that there are however, 269.7 million connected lines across the GSM, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Fixed Wired/Wireless, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) platforms.