Nigeria’s subscriber base, teledensity progress to 127.61m lines, 91.7

Nigeria’s telecommunications industry made tremendous progress between 2010 and 2014, with teledensity now standing at 91.7, the highest in the African continent, alongside an impressive 127.61 million subscriber base that beats South Africa’s present active lines.

Figures released on Wednesday from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) confirmed this progress but also showed slowed growth in the number of active lines recorded in 2013 and 2014.

A total of 95.89 million active lines were registered by the telecommunications industry across various networks in 2011, the NBS said.

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The number of active lines grew significantly by 18 percent or 17.31 million in 2011 to reach total of 113.20 million active lines in 2012, but recorded a relatively slower increase by 11.3 percent or 14.41 million more lines to a total of 127.61 million active lines in 2013.

“And in the year 2014 a much slower growth of 6.90 million lines or 5.1 percent (as at September) has been recorded,” the NBS further stated.

Over the 2010 to 2012 period, the national/local call traffic shows a sharp ascent indicating increased patronage across the networks, evidenced in 2012 by an increasing subscriber base.Similarity in the international call traffic shows a much slower climb in call activity from year to year but very encouraging results over the years growing at 12.4 percent as at 2013, the federal data office highlighted.

Relative to domestic calls, international calls recorded by outgoing and incoming were lower largely because tariffs are higher and therefore costly in call charges.

The ratio of outgoing to incoming calls is approximately 1:1.6 in this category and remained steady in the 2010 – 2013 periods.

Year 2010 recorded 1,757.65 million minutes of international outgoing calls and 2,888.64 million minutes of incoming calls, totaling 4,646.28 million minutes.