Internet data connection is proving to be a human necessity as some Nigerians are now spending more time online and using more mobile data since the enforcement of a lockdown in several states of the country to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, BusinessDay finds.
With a lot of people working from home, telecommunications companies in Nigeria have recorded some increase in online video content consumption, social media usage, email and chat applications.
A BusinessDay source at MTN Nigeria said that although there seems to be an increase in the volume of data usage in some parts of the country, data revenue increase cannot be determined until the end of the financial quarter.
“We’ve seen a lot of traffic in both voice and data within the last three weeks, especially in specific parts of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt where the elite population are expected to work from home. So, as a result of video conferencing, Skype, file downloads and the rest, data volume will go up, but we cannot say that this will generally affect data revenues. If it does, it will reflect in our financial results after April,” the source said.
MTN is Nigeria’s largest telecommunications network operator with over 70.6 million of the country’s total 186 million subscribers on its network.
The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) rate for the month of January and February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, was hovering around $3.85. This includes voice and data services across the whole 183 million subscribers. When the lockdown in Nigeria started at the end of March, there would have been minimal impact because consumer behaviour had not changed and majority of people were still travelling from their homes to work. However, in April, after the lockdown, the type of activities done in enterprises will not correlate with the type of work that can be done at home because most people do not have the tools or facilities other than to connect to Zoom or Skype.
Ayotunde Coker, managing director and CEO, Rack Centre, told BusinessDay that there is an increase in traffic seen on the internet exchange point.
“With Rack Centre hosting over 35 carriers and internet service providers (ISPs), one of the things we’ve seen is an increase in traffic on what is running through the Internet Exchange Point (IXP). I can surmise from my experience that there was a spike in capacity demand in form of voice and also for data,” Coker said during a Zoom conference call with journalists at the weekend.
Rack Centre is the most connected Tier III constructed facility certified data centre that connects over 35 of the major carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Nigeria, Tier 1 networks, pan-African international carriers, and direct connection to all five undersea cables serving the South Atlantic Coast of Africa.
The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) said on April 8 that telcos had been allowed to lay fibre optic cables and deploy other telecoms equipment to expand their networks infrastructure to provide more efficient services to consumers as a result of increased traffic.
“This will significantly reduce drop calls and improve networks performance of the telecom operating companies,” Umar Garba Danbatta, executive vice chairman of NCC, said.
About a week ago, it was reported that Kenya’s top telecom operator, Safaricom, had seen a 70 percent surge in data usage since the country enforced its lockdown. As a result, the view emerged that Nigerian telcos, with a lot more mobile network subscribers, must have seen a lot more surge in data usage as a result of the stay-at-home order by the Federal Government in Lagos, Abuja and Ogun State which began March 30.
However, experts say it may not perfectly correlate as Safaricom’s surge in data stems from its successful operation of mobile money and the M-Pesa system has seen an increase in usage of transfer of monies and digital financial services.
Globacom, Nigeria’s second-largest telco with over 51.7 million subscribers, said it wasn’t ready to divulge any details of data revenue or volume increase when BusinessDay reached out to its public relations manager.
Emeka Opara, director of corporate communications and CSR, Airtel Nigeria, did not answer telephone calls or respond to text messages from BusinessDay on the matter.
However, Olusola Teniola, president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), the umbrella association for telecom companies in the country, said the normal trend was for people to go out on the streets to purchase scratch cards, so with the lockdown, voice usage couldn’t have increased tremendously.
“However, data usage may have increased because the usage of over-the-top (OTT) applications like WhatsApp, Zoom, Skype, or any video conferencing for online learning, meetings, and other things would have increased the usage of data,” Teniola told BusinessDay in a telephone interview.
Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson
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