At the end of September 2009 Nigeria has been able to reach another milestone in the telecoms market having recorded over 70 million active subscribers.

This was revealed in latest telecoms market data from telecoms industry regulator, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) where the GSM and CDMA market peaked at 62 million and over 6 million active subscribers respectively. On the other hand, the fixed/fixed wireless market has recorded over one million lines.

The market leader is MTN Nigeria which recorded 5.12 per cent growth. It finished with over 28 million lines, almost 13million ahead of its rival, Glo mobile, which has seized second place in the market and reached over 16 million lines to record 2.03 per cent increase.

Zain Nigeria is retaining its third place at the end of Q3 with just over 14 million active lines. It increased by 1.98 percent from Q2 to Q3.

The government owned Nigerian network, NITEL has continued to maintain the same figure of 258, 520 line since the Q2 of 2008, and the new entrant Etisalat, has gained almost 2 million active subscribers while it recorded 75.77 percent growth from Q2 to Q3.

Out of the four CDMA network operating in Nigeria, Visafone overtook the rest during the quarter with a user base of 2,533,812 million. It rounded up with 9.81 per cent quarterly growth. Also, Multi-Links recorded a slight drop from 1,871,792 in Q2 to 1,820,750 active lines at Q3.

Starcomms also added more subscribers by ending the quarter with over 1.5 active lines from 1.4 lines in Q2 while Reliance (Zoom mobile) reached over 1.1m during the quarter. It had 5.48 per cent and 1.71 per cent growth at the end of Q2 and Q3 respectively.

On aggregate, the total market grew by 0.89 per cent in Q1 to Q2 and 3.66 per cent between Q2 and Q3 2009.

Source: Technology News: Nigeria telecom market exceeds 70m active phone lines By Olubunmi Adeniyi.

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