Industry data has shown that a telecom company, MTN lost a whopping 7.3 million subscriptions in January, as it enforced the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s directive of banning SIMs not linked with NIN.
Recall that in December 2023, NCC issued a directive to telecommunications operators (MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile, among others) to implement full network barring on all phone lines for which the subscribers have not submitted their national identification numbers (NINs) by February 28, 2024.
Furthermore, individuals who provided their NINs but were not subsequently validated will likewise be completely barred. If five or more lines are connected to an unverified NIN, then NINs that have been submitted but not validated will be barred on or before March 29, 2024. In the same vein, lines that have less than five connections to an unconfirmed NIN will be blocked by April 15, 2024, at the latest.
MTN’s total active subscriptions, which stood at 87 million in December 2023, plunged to 79.7 million in January, thereby, losing about 7.3 million according to the latest NCC data.
Following the NCC’s rule on NIN-SIM linking, MTN revealed that it has disconnected 4.2 million connections. The company claimed that it has verified 19 million lines in total since the NCC issued an industry-wide regulation in December 2023 that required the full banning of subscriber lines not linked to their NIN.
As of February 28, 2024, 4.3 million of them had been authenticated, while 4.2 million had been disconnected. 9mobile, also recorded a decline for January this year, as the company’s subscriptions declined by 135,788 to 13.7 million.
Despite the current disconnection exercise, Airtel and Globacom saw slight increases in their subscription databases for the month. Airtel added 767,887 new customers.
As a result, its database increased from 61.8 million in December of last year to 62.6 million in January.
Globacom’s database increased by 321,869 to 61.9 million from 61.6 million in December, indicating a rise in subscriptions. In total, active subscriptions for mobile services in Nigeria declined by over six million in January this year to 218 million, compared to 224.4 million as of December 2023.
With the decline in actively connected lines recorded by the operators, the country’s teledensity, which measures the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area, also declined to 100.75 in January 2024 from 103.66 percent recorded in December last year.