As more people come online, the total volume of data consumed by Nigerian subscribers increased by 83 per cent in 2019, a latest report by the Nigerian Communications Commission has shown.
According to the NCC’s 2019 Subscribers/ network data report, telecoms subscribers consumed 125,149.86 terabytes of data as of December 2019 compared with 68,154.12TB of data in December 2018. The commission attributed the rise in data usage to the increased broadband penetration in the country in 2019.
Also, the regulatory body said it provided the necessary regulatory support for operators to implement the various initiatives within the year that increased data usage in the country. The report stated that 2019 Active Mobile Broadband Subscriptions to 3G and 4G networks were 72.15 million.
Based on the total number of broadband subscriptions to MTN, Glo, Airtel, 9mobile, Smile and Ntel, broadband penetration stood at 37.8 per cent as of December 2019.
The statistics showed that as of December 2019, the total active Internet subscriptions for the mobile segment was 126.08 million reflecting a 12.5 per cent increase from 112.06 million reported in December 2018.
Three of the four major GSM operators reported growth in subscription between December 2018 and December 2019. MTN recorded the highest percentage increase of active Internet subscriptions of 23.26 per cent, from 43.9 million subscriptions in 2018 to 54.11 million subscription in the same period in 2019.
Subscribers to Airtel Internet services grew by 16 per cent and Globacom Internet users grew by 3.31 per cent. 9mobile recorded a decline of 18.67 per cent in active Internet subscription from 9.91 million subscriptions in 2018 to 8.07 subscriptions at the end of 2019.
Visafone Communications Limited recorded the least number of active Internet subscriptions at 90,174 as of December 2019. Under the fixed line category, NCC said the active Internet subscriptions for MTN, 21st Century and ipNX as of December 2019 was 9,670.
This indicated a further decrease from 2018 which was 9,868 subscriptions. A breakdown of the data showed that Ipnx had the highest subscriptions at 4,775, MTN had 2,096 and 21st Century had the lowest at 2,799. Analysis showed that the Internet usage for the fixed wired network was being relegated and that there was an indication that most subscribers had switched to GSM lines. Punch
Pix: Some network providers in the country
