Nigeria’s total active mobile subscribers reached 219.7 million in February 2024, as internet usage dipped to 694,804.54 terabytes (TB), new data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has shown.
This marks the country’s first internet usage decline in 11 months (since April 2023), when total usage stood at 556,540.42 TB. This represents a 3.70 per cent decrease from January’s 721,522 TB. The fall in internet usage occurred despite the marginal increase in broadband penetration and mobile internet subscriptions in the month.
The NCC, which made this information public in its most recent industry data on Monday, said that the spike was brought about by the operators, after losing more than six million subscriptions in January as a result of the NCC’s implementation of the NIN-SIM order.
The increase in February was driven by a rise in MTN, Airtel, and Globacom subscribers.
Recall that the number of active subscriptions across all four mobile networks fell to 218 million in January 2024 from 224.4 million in December 2023.
9mobile suffered more as it reported a drop in subscriptions for the month, while Globacom also had a minor increase in subscribers.
A breakdown of the operators’ individual data showed that MTN, which controls the largest share of the market, gained 1.1 million new subscriptions in February. This brought its subscriptions figure to 80.9 million according to the NCC data.
Airtel also added 434,175 new subscriptions in the month under review. This pushed up its subscription database from 62.6 million in January to 63 million in February.
Globacom had an increase as well, adding 176,756 new customers throughout the month. In February, Globacom reported 62.1 million active subscribers, up from 61.9 million the month before.
However, 9mobile lost 151,517 subscribers in February, which resulted in red numbers once more. In February 2024, there were 13.6 million active subscriptions for the telco, which had lost millions of customers over the years, down from 13.8 million in January.
Broadband penetration rose by 0.55 percentage points in February to 43.08 percent from 42.53 per cent in January. Broadband penetration is now 5.41 percentage points below its February 2023 high of 48.49 per cent. Total broadband subscriptions stood at 93.39 million in February, 1.30 per cent higher than the 93.39 million it was in January 2024.
Mobile internet subscriptions rose by 1.30 million to 162.81 million. February was a recovery month for telecom subscriptions in the country. The total number of mobile subscriptions rose to 219.68 million from 218.11 million.
Despite the marginal fall in February, internet usage remains historically high, underscoring the country’s increasing dependence on digital services. 2G and 3G usage fell in the month, being reported to 57.55 per cent and 9.17 per cent (from 57.78 per cent and 9.36 per cent, respectively).
However, 4G and 5G rose to 32.11 per cent and 1.18 per cent (from 31.75 per cent and 1.11 per cent, respectively), underscoring growth in smartphone penetration in the country.
Internet usage in Nigeria has surged in recent years because of growing reliance on digital services and a youthful population. In the past six months, it has grown from 353,118.89TB as of December 2021 to an average of over 600,000 TB.
This growth has been attributed to the increase in online activities that followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in smartphone use in the country. According to GSMA, as of 2022, 58 percent of Nigerians living in urban areas and 32 percent living in rural areas owned smartphones. Smartphone penetration in the country stood at 52 per cent in 2022.
“The increase in data traffic will be driven mainly by the growing usage of data-heavy services, primarily video streaming and online gaming. In Sub-Saharan Africa’s streaming market, where most customers rely on mobile broadband for connectivity, competition is heating up among global streaming providers (e.g., Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) and local providers (e.g., Showmax and Wi-flix),” GSMA recently said.
Internet usage is expected to continue its upward trajectory in Nigeria, with the country and Ethiopia poised to add close to 67 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.
The rollout of new technologies is also expected to boost data usage. Karl Toriola, the chief executive officer of MTN Nigeria, noted, “5G has been instrumental towards servicing digitisation; a lot of people are shifting their consumption from traditional voice and circuit switch services to data services…