Nigeria ends 2014 with 139m active telephone lines

•Teledensity now 99.3 per cent

• Report projects $10b earnings for operators by 2020 

DESPITE the poor telecommunications services which hallmarked operations in 2014, Nigeria still finished the year with 139 million active telephone connections.    

  Also, about 188.9 million lines were connected across the GSM, Code Division Multiple Access Operator (CDMA) and the fixed wired and wireless technology platforms.

   Going by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) statistics released Tuesday, the country is some inches away from attaining the 100 per cent teledensity mark.

    According to the statistics, the country ended 2014 attaining 99.32 per cent teledensity.

    Teledensity or telephone density is the number of telephone connections for every hundred individuals living within an area. It varies widely across the nations and also between urban and rural areas within a country. Telephone density has significant correlation with the per capita GDP of the area. It is also used as an indicator of economic development of the country or specific region.

    Further analysis showed that within the year under review, Nigeria grew its telephone subscriber base by connecting additional 19.3 million, while 11.4 million were active.  

   Nigeria actually ended 2013 with 169.7 million connected lines with 127.9 being active and 88.4 per cent teledensity.

   The new statistics showed that the quartet of GSM operators including MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat, which connected 184.9 million subscribers have 136.7 million active customers. The troubled CDMA operators, currently by the statistics, ended 2014 with 3.7 million connected lines with only 2.1 million remaining active. 

   Indeed, the latest statistics further affirm Nigeria as the largest telecommunications market in Africa.

   The largeness of the Nigerian market has further been confirmed by a report from Pyramid Research, which posited that going by the increasing rate of subscriptions, the country would see a whopping 182 million active subscriber base before 2020. 

    According to Pyramid Research, an international market analyst and consulting services firm to the communications industry, Nigerian telecommunications market is expected to generate $10.9 billion in 2019, up from a total of $9.2 billion in 2013.

    The report said although growth in the market will be slightly reduced in 2015 as the market recovers from the large number of fixed-line disconnections, the long-term growth of the telecoms sector will likely not be affected as the telecoms market will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of two per cent over the next five years, with mobile data leading the party at a 16 percent increase till 2019. 

  “Political instability and low oil prices have led to a depreciation of the Naira against the US Dollar, but the telecommunications market will remain an integral part of the country’s efforts to diversify its sources of growth. Other countries in Africa are likely to follow Nigeria when it comes to mobile technology developments. The increasing demand for mobile data will offer service providers, as well as new entrants to the market, ample opportunity to test and grow their service offerings in Nigeria,” said Severin Luebke, an Analyst at Pyramid Research. 

   The report noted that despite the prevailing uncertainties caused by recent currency devaluations, the Nigerian telecommunications market still offers strong growth rates of around 6.8 per cent per year for the period between 2014 and 2019. With 182 million subscribers, the country will remain the biggest market for mobile subscription on the continent.