According to the state-by-state analysis, of the NBS, Lagos State had the highest number of active voice subscribers with 26, 739,346, followed by Ogun with 13,070,779 and Kano with 12,325,633 respectively.

The NBS report also noted that MTN maintained its status quo as the telecommunication service provider with the highest share of subscriptions in Q4 2023.

In comparative terms, Bayelsa recorded the least number of 1,557,786 voice subscribers, followed by Zamfara and Gombe with 2,772,424 and 2,785,030, respectively,”

This was contained in the NBS Telecoms Data: Active Voice and Internet per State, Porting and Tariff Information report for Q4 2023, released in Abuja, today.

According to NBS, this shows an increase of 0.96 percent compared to the 222,571,568 reported in the fourth quarter of 2022.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the report showed that active voice subscribers increased by 1.32 percent from the 221,769,883 recorded in Q3 2023.

Also, the report revealed a total of 163,838,439 active internet subscribers were recorded in Q4 of 2023 compared to the 154,847,901 reported in Q4 2022.

“This represents a 5.81 percent increase in active internet subscriptions year-on-year.

“While on a quarter-on-quarter basis, active internet subscribers grew by 2.29 percent from the 160,171,125 recorded in Q3 of 2023,’’ it stated.

On state-by-state analysis, the report showed that Lagos State had the highest number of active voice subscribers in Q4 2023 with 26, 739,346, followed by Ogun with 13,070,779 and Kano with 12,325,633.

Similarly, the report said Lagos State had the highest number of active internet subscribers in Q4 2023 with 18,927,446, followed by Ogun with 9,570,463 and Kano with 9,031,581.

“On the other hand, Bayelsa recorded the least number of internet subscribers with 1,193,525, followed by Zamfara and Gombe with 1,959,252 and 2,100,073, respectively.”

This is the highest number of internet subscribers in Nigeria after 148,133,233 recorded in February 2021, TechEconomy.ng can report.

Of the total figure, mobile (GSM) accounted for 147.45 million subscribers — leaving Fixed Wire and VoIP for the remaining subscribers.

According to the data, the total number of active mobile (GSM) internet subscribers increased to 147,448,922 at the end of April 2022 — after recording the lowest in July 2021 at 139.38 million.

In December 2020, the Federal Government directed telecommunications companies to suspend the sales and reactivation of new SIM cards.

The policy denied new entrants into the country access to purchase mobile lines as well as existing users who want to retrieve their lost lines.

Further checks showed that MTN Nigeria’s internet subscribers increased by 1.1 million, Airtel increased by 918,191 and Globacom increased by 331,360 in April 2022.

9mobile, on the other hand, dropped over 108,000 internet subscribers for the period under review — its lowest of all time.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s active telephony subscriptions reached 201,670,650 million in the month under review.

TechEconomy.ng’s calculations specify that the country has recorded 6,206,752 new active telephony subscriptions in the first four months of year 2022.

With this result, the active telephony subscriptions in Nigeria have rebound since January 2021 when the country recorded more than 200 million subscriptions.

Teledensity

The NCC’s statistics also revealed that the teledensity increased to 105.65%. Teledensity is defined as the number of active telephone connections per one hundred (100) inhabitants living within an area and is expressed as a percentage figure. From March 2019, teledensity is calculated based on a population estimate of 190 million, up from 140 million.

Percentage (%) Market Share by Technology

In terms of Percentage (%) Market Share by Technology, the NCC report shows that 99.80 per cent of the subscribers are utilizing telecommunications services through the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).

Fixed Wired technology and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), account for 0.10%, respectively while the Code-division multiple access (CDMA) technology has no footprint in the market, presently.

ICT contribution to GDP:

The table below describes the percentage contributed to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria by the telecommunications industry.

From the table above it can be deduced that telecoms accounted for 12.61% of the total ICT contributions to the nation’s GDP as at fourth quarter 2021.

Active Telephony Subscriptions

TechEconomy.ng had reported that Nigeria’s broadband subscriptions reached 81 million in April 2022.

The report on NCC’s website shows that subscription reached 81,676,539 in the month under review which is the highest subscription since January 2021.

In terms of broadband penetration, the figure increased to 42.79% in April as against 42.24% recorded in the previous month.

TechEconomy.ng analyses show that Nigeria increased its broadband penetration by 1.91% in the first four months of 2022 by recording 42.79% (April), 42.24% (March), 40.91% (February) and 41.61% in January.