Despite the economy recession, it is surprising to hear that over
N197 billion naira is spent monthly on internet data by telecoms subscribers in Nigeria. And according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), GSM operators; MTN, Glo, Airtel, 9mobile and others, have a total active subscribers base of 149.3 million.
Last month's monthly Subscriber/Operator Data released by the regulator disclosed that MTN had
58,121,427 users, Glo managing
37,270,100 customers, Airtel
34,336,802, 9mobile with
19,621,806 users, and other smaller operators sharing the remaining figures. However, information on the NCC’s website showed that
out of the 149.5m subscribers, only 92m are active internet users, who depend on data provided by the telcos to access the world-wide-web and hook on to the social media.
In the month of June, MTN had
31.7m internet users, Glo
27.2m, Airtel
20.2m while 9mobile had
12.6m, and the smaller operators sharing the remaining figures. From the above top four GSM operators, Nigerian data users can be grouped into 4 categories based on how much they spent on monthly data, revealed
Daily Trust.
Nigeria Data Users Conservative Categories1. About 70% of internet users, which totals 64m, use up to N1000 data monthly each, raising the operators’ revenue base by N64bn.
2. Almost 15% or 13.8m users, which comprises mostly of small business owners and middle class people, each purchase an average of N3000 data monthly, contributing N41.1bn every month to the telcos’ coffers.
3. Also, 10% of the internet subscribers or 9.15m use N5000 each every month, growing the operators’ revenue by N45.6bn.
4. About 5% of the internet customers or 4.6m buy N10,000 data each, increasing the GSM and mobile internet companies’ revenue by N46bn.
Revenue garnered through data alone by our beloved telcos every year is over
N2.3 trillion naira. So, them
urging NCC to block OTT platforms like WhatsApp, etc will lead to losses in data revenue.
Nigeria telecom industry has always been listed among one of the fastest growing in the world by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Its latest ranking placed the percentage of Nigerians with internet users at 11.40%, while about 50% individuals in the country are now able to access the internet.
