Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), on its website, showed that the telecommunications sector grew by 22 per cent with 28,145,458 new Internet users from 125,728,328 at the end of December 2019 to 153,873,786 in December 2020.
The NCC statistics indicated that the telecoms sector was pivotal to the early escape of the country from its recent economic recession with a contribution of 12.45 per cent to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Globacom recorded the highest subscriber growth from 28,934,439 data users at the end of 2019 to 40,106,659 at the end of 2020, an addition of 11,172,220 new data subscribers or 39 per cent growth. This is more than the 22 per cent growth recorded in the year under review.
The latest update is in tandem with the data released last month by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which showed that Globacom led in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector in the third quarter of 2020.
MTN came second with a 21per cent growth while Airtel recorded a 20per cent increase to take third place. 9mobile recorded a loss with a 12 per cent drop in its data subscription figure.
Analysts said Glo data service is buoyed by the international submarine cable called Glo1, a wholly-owned facility that brought unprecedented bandwidth from Europe to Nigeria and other West African countries.
