The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed that the number of connected telephone lines in Nigeria rose to 216 million between January and March. That is a 6-million increase from 210 million last year.
The Punch reported this morning that in that 3-month period, exactly 1,270,766 telephone lines have been added to the ones that were already existing. According to them, this increase came despite the fluctuation in Nigeria’s telephone density - that is, the number of telephone connections per one hundred individuals living in an area.
Also, out of those 216 million lines that have been connected, only 149 million are active. GSM operators run 147 million lines, 1.2 million are CDMA-controlled, and fixed wired/wireless operators have 176,579 lines.
NCC’s analysis also reveals that MTN has the largest market share of all the GSM operators with 39 percent (57 million subscribers). Globacom is a distant second with 23 percent (34.6 million subscribers), followed by Airtel who also have 23 percent but with 33.9 million subscribers. Etisalat holds a 15 percent market share with 21.8 million subscribers.
According to Prof. Umar Danbatta, the executive Vice Chairman of NCC, "The underserved population in Nigeria has been reduced from 36.8 million (24.5 percent) in 2013 to 33.7 million (22.5 percent) in 2015 based on the Access Gap Study and using the 150 million population benchmark."
