According to online media Nigeria’s telecommunications regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has ordered mobile services operator MTN to review its charges to customers in order to reduce its market dominance.
“The mobile data market segment has grown significantly in the last five years and accounts for about 99% of the total data market. The GSM Operators lead this market segment. The major competition concern is that the wholesale providers of bulk bandwidth also play in the retail mobile data market and potentially stifle competition in this market,” the NCC said in a report that detailed market dominance of mobile operators.
Reports say the NCC has ordered MTN to charge customers the same rate irrespective of whether users are calling competitor operators or other MTN subscribers.
“The mobile voice market is not effectively competitive and is still highly concentrated with an HHI of 3063. MTN has a 44% market share of subscribers within this market. There is also a wide differential (of about 300%) between on‐net and off‐net calls and this is indicative of the likely establishment of a calling club for MTN subscribers,” the NCC said.
Although Starcomms has the highest market share in Nigeria, it will be exempt from the conditions brought on MTN. “Starcomms (with about 33% market share of subscribers) has the highest market share within the fixed voice market, it is not considered to have significant market power in this market as it has consistently lost market share over the past three years. The fixed voice market has been in decline since 2008 and has lost 70% of its market over that period,” it said.
The changes to on-net and off-net calls reportedly came into effect on May 01.
Staff Writer
