In the latest statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), it was revealed that the African nation now has 99.14-million active telephone subscribers as of the end of March in 2012.
The data was collected from Global System for Mobile Communications networks (GSM), the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and the fixed wired/wireless networks in the country, and represents a combined figure obtained by the individual organisations.
“Breakdown of the 99.14 million lines as at March indicated that while the major GSM companies had 94.53 million active subscriptions, the CDMA recorded 4.01 million while fixed line operators only had 599,335 lines on their networks,” Nigeria’s Daily Trust wrote.
The number of active telephone subscribers has been on the increase in Nigeria, as it stood at 95.88-million in December 2011, increasing slightly to 96.15 million in January 2012, with February 2012 adding another 500 000 subscribers in the month.
March saw the biggest jump in subscribers, as Nigeria recorded 2.53 million new telephone lines being activated that month alone.
While the country registered 99.14 million active subscriptions, the number of connected lines on all the networks is actually much higher – with 134.91-millionconnected lines. The discrepancy between active lines and connected lines could be attributed to the fact that around 35.74-million telephone lines might redundant or inactive.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
