The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), on Tuesday, said that active subscribers in the nation’s telecommunications industry stood at 150,262,066 in July.
The telecommunications umpire said in its Monthly Subscriber Data (MSD) that the active telecommunications service customers increased by 443,160 from the June 2016 figure of 149,818,906.
According to the data, 149,708,077 of the 150,262,066 active numbers subscribed to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network services.
The GSM operators’ active customers increased by 528,994 from 149,179,083 subscribers they recorded in June.
The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators had 371,614 active users in July, indicating a decrease of 82,479 from the 454,092 customers they had in June.
Also, the monthly subscriber data showed that the Fixed Wired/Wireless networks’ consumers decreased to 164,114 in July, as they lost 6,425 customers to their record of 170,539 in June.
The chart revealed that the teledensity of the country’s telecommunications industry increased to 107.33 per cent in July, from 107.01 per cent in June.
Teledensity statistics is used to measure the percentage of a country’s population with access to telecommunications services as determined from the subscribers’ base.
Nigeria’s teledensity is currently calculated by the NCC on a population of 140 million people.
There is an increase of 0.32 per cent in the teledensity of Nigeria in July.
Also, 41 fake and unlicenced service providers operating in the country’s telecommunications landscape were discovered.
NCC said there was compliance monitoring regarding the engagement of unlicenced service provider, providing internet/data access in Nigeria.
The report stated that following the commissions’ surveillance and intelligence gathering exercise, it was discovered that some financial institutions engaged the illegal providers for their internet and data services.
According to the report, in line with the commission’s compliance processes, these banks were requested to provide the names and details of their service providers in this regard.
“Arising from this compliance check, the Commission has discovered that 41 companies engaged were operating without the requisite authorisation.
”To this end, the Commission has commenced the necessary enforcement process in line with the provisions of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003,” it said.
The report said that the telecommunications umpire’s activities were consistent with Section 89 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003.
It said that the section mandated NCC to ”monitor all significant matters relating to the performance of all licensed telecom service providers and publish annual reports at the end of each financial year”.
The report noted that NCC had developed Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement strategies to ensure fair competition, ethical market conduct and optimal quality service in the telecommunications industry.
