Telecoms subscribers in Nigeria spent about N602.6 billion on airtime for their
phones to make calls in the first five months of the year, spanning January to
May, New Telegraph investigations have revealed.
The figure is arrived at using the subscriber data released monthly by the
telecoms industry regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and
the current industry’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) provided by the
operators.
figures released by the telecom regulator. It was gathered that each of the
monthly subscription represents the total number of active lines on all mobile
networks in the country. These include the Global System for Mobile
Communications (GSM) operators; the Code Division Multiple Access
operators as well as the fixed wired/ wireless networks.
Two telecoms firms, MTN and Etisalat, put the current average spending by
subscribers monthly at $6 (N936). Further investigation revealed that
subscribers spent estimated N191.5 billion in January with based on the
number of subscribers, which stood at 127 million and the ARPU averaging
N936.
With the same ARPU, subscribers’ spending moved to an estimated N120.7
billion in February; N118.8 billion in March; N121 billion in April and in May, the
airtime expenditure was conservatively estimated at N112.7 billion.
Subscribers’ expenditure thus adds up to estimated N602.6 billion for the five
months, indicating the premium paid to telecoms services by the consumers.
Reacting to the findings in a telephone interview, President, National
Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Mr. Deolu Ogunbanjo, said
telecoms services were taking priority position in the daily needs of Nigerians.
He said: “While I may not be able to tell you categorically how much we spend
monthly on phone calls as subscribers, it is understandable that Nigerians
spend a sizeable chunk of their incomes on telecoms services, which are
replacing travel expenditures for the people.”
Ogunbanjo said, next to shelter, food and other needs of man “is the need to
communicate, which saves us a lot of time that would have been wasted
travelling from one place to another to see relatives or do transactions with
business associates.”
He stated that the huge amount of money expended daily on telephone
services by Nigerians had informed the insistence by the consumer rights
group that “subscribers must get value for their money through the provision
of quality services by the operators.”
However, President, Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators (ALTON), Mr.
Gbenga Adebayo, said the expenditure by subscribers had even reduced
drastically in the last 13 years of telecoms regulation.
“You will recall that, in this country, we have made calls for close to N100 and
today, we are witnessing a decrease in ARPU and in fact, today, you can make
calls for as low as N10 and also send text messages for as low as N4 he stated.
The ARPU is a financial performance benchmark in the telecoms industry that
measures the average monthly revenue generated by operators from each
customer.
According to official industry data by the telecoms watchdog, the industry
recorded 127.6 million active mobile subscriptions last January and this figure
increased
to 129 million at the end of February. the number declined to 127
million but picked up to 129.3 million in April and at the end of May,
the figure stood at 131.1 million.
The May subscriber data is the latest official promoted by the regulator is
driving cost of telecoms services down, stressing that much more reduction is
expected in the coming years.
Acknowledging how capital-intensive telecoms infrastructure deployment is,
the NCC boss had recently said only MTN was making profits in the market. He
said other operators were still putting more investment in infrastructure rollout
to cover more locations in the country.
MTN currently leads other network operators in the area of subscriber base
and revenue generation in the country.
Official data show that MTN currently has about 57.2 million telephone users
on its network. Airtel Nigeria trailed with 25.5 million; Globacom is third with
23.4 million while Etisalat has 18.5 million telephone users on its network.
This was as at the end of March when the latest data was released by the
regulator.
www.newtelegraphonline.com
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