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Foreign investment into telecom sector slows by 46.8% to $399 billion

Interswitch mulls telecom operations, gets MVNO license

The total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the Nigerian telecoms industry in the year 2022 stood at $ 399,905,531.38, representing a 46.8 percent decline from $ 753,044,446.35 recorded in 2021, the Nigerian Communication Commission report reveals.

According to the Commission’s 2022 subscriber/ network data annual report, the total domestic investment for the year 2022 was N785,771,028,960.36, with total revenue of N3,856,026,156,380.29.

Further breakdown of the total revenue, showed that N3.32 trillion was generated from GSM; N385 billion from fixed wired and N92 billion from internet service providers.

Also, N40.74 billion was generated from value-added services; N3.29 billion was generated from collocation and infrastructure sharing while N5.59 billion was derived from other telecom operators.

The report showed that the number of active subscribers increased from 195,463,898 subscriptions in 2021 to 222,571,568 active voice subscriptions as at December 2022.

According to the Commission, the increase was due to a number of reasons which includes subscriber loyalty, promos, seasonal effects, aggressive consumer acquisition drive, and competitive product offerings across all the networks.

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A breakdown of the mobile operator`s subscription showed that MTN; GLO; AIRTEL and EMTS each recorded 89,016,678 (40.06 percent); 60,290,012 (27.13 percent); 60,065,904 (27.03 percent) and 12,852,706 (5.78 percent) subscribers respectively.

“Active Subscriptions increased by 27,107,670 subscriptions representing a 13.86 percent increase in Active Subscriptions Year on Year. The increase in the Operators’ subscriber base was attributed to a number of reasons which includes subscriber loyalty, promos, seasonal effects, aggressive consumer acquisition drive, and competitive product offerings across all the networks. The increase in Active Subscription impacted positively on other derived telecom indicators such as teledensity, internet penetration as well as broadband penetration,” it stated.

The report also indicated an increase in the number of internet subscribers, from 141,971,560 subscriptions as at December 2021 to 154,847,901 subscriptions as at December 2022. This represents an increase of 9.06 percent.

Broadband penetration in the period also increased from 40.88 percent as at December 2021 to 47.36 percent as at December 2022. Similarly, broadband subscriptions increased from 78,041,883 subscriptions in December 2021 to 90,398,960 subscriptions as at December 2022.

“There was an increase in the volume of data consumed in the year end December 2022 when compared with the year-end December 2021. The total volume of data consumed by subscribers increased to 518,381.78TB as at December 2022 from 353,118.89TB as at December 2021. This represents an increase of 46.77% in data consumption within the period.

“Telecoms industry contribution to the Nigerian Gross Domestic Products increased from 12.61 percent in the Fourth Quarter, 2021 to 13.55 percent in the Fourth Quarter of 2022,” it stated.

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