• Subscribers spend N444.6b on calls in Q1
• NATCOMS seeks extension of deadline, NCC declines
TWO days to the deadline set by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), an investigation by The Guardian has revealed that about 27 million Subscribers Identification Modules (SIMs) may be disconnected if they are not registered by June 30.
As at Monday, virtually none of the telecommunications operators has confidently recorded 100 per cent compliance from its subscribers on the registration of their SIMs. This is despite various campaigns, advertorials and freebies offered by the service providers to woo subscribers to confirm the status of their SIMs and if not registered, to do so.
Besides, despite the continuous drop in the quality of service, subscribers in the country might have spent N444.6 billion through phone calls in the first four months of 2013.
Indeed, latest statistics from the NCC revealed that Nigeria, as in the first quarter of the year, has 164 million connected lines with 119 million being active.
Ahead of the SIM registration deadline, operators had sent several short message services (SMS) to subscribers to remind them of the deadline, in addition to various telemarketing calls.
MTN for instance claimed to have wooed its unregistered subscribers with a gift of free airtime of N400.
But going by investigations, virtually all the players, including Airtel, Globacom, Etisalat, even the troubled Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Visafone, Starcomms and Multilinks put together may lose close to 27 million subscribers from their networks.
Findings revealed that while some subscribers are dead, others have relocated. There is also the challenge of inadequate registration agents, especially in the hinterlands. The trouble spots in the country are another challenge to the operators, as they claim lack of access to those areas. Some SIMs have also been damaged and lost.
In an MTN Group’s financial report, released from South Africa, the company claimed that its Nigerian arm has recorded about 87 per cent compliance with the SIM card registration, stressing that more efforts and campaigns could still encourage others yet to register to do so.
MTN Nigeria currently has over 52 million subscribers, the highest in the country.
Other players, including Airtel, Glo and Etisalat, will also be affected by the NCC deadline, as all of them are yet to get their subscribers to register their SIMs.
NCC statistics put Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat subscribers at 24.1 million; 24.3 million and 15.1 million respectively.
The Guardian’s investigation revealed that compliance from subscribers of the trio is still below 90 per cent.
According to a top official at Etisalat Nigeria, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the company with over 15 million subscribers in its few years of operations in the country hopes that its subscribers register their SIMs before the deadline. He said that there had been appreciable co-operation from the subscribers.
During an interview with journalists, the Corporate Service Executive at MTN Nigeria, Mr. Akinwale Goodluck, said the operator had been sensitising its subscribers who are yet to comply to immediately register their lines or lose ownership of the numbers by June 30.
Goodluck said MTN Nigeria was ready to fully comply with the NCC’s directive. “As you know, NCC has said come June 30, all unregistered subscriber identification module (SIM) lines will be disconnected. I think operators have come a long way in developing a database. As an industry, with the regulator, we’ve put together a reliable database.”
But the President of the National Association Telecommunications Subscribers of Nigeria (NATCOMS), Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, has appealed to NCC to extend the deadline by three months, which he described as “one-way final” warning.
Ogunbanjo, who recalled that NCC introduced the SIM registration programme in March 2011 and was to end it in September 2011, said “NATCOMS asked for a 12-month extension while the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) asked for a nine-month extension.
“Perhaps, NCC added 12 months and nine months together and extended by 21 months, which is now expiring on June 30, 2013.”
The NATCOMS boss noted that there had been various issues around the exercise in the last three weeks.
According to him, during the SIM registration, some “umbrella registration agents” were not collecting the full details needed because of their rush to register many subscribers so as to get paid. He added that some of these agents were asking subscribers to pay N100 before registration, which according to him, discourages subscribers.
According to Ogunbanjo, some of the agents who belong to some network operators collect other operators’ SIM cards for registration in order to shore up the number of SIM cards they register daily. He added that some agents copy their daily registered subscribers and give to their colleagues in business as some form of ‘help’.
“In view of the submissions above, a lot of subscribers will be locked out due to no fault of theirs as they think they have registered their SIM cards.
“Against the backdrop of this and in order to ensure that every subscriber is given fair consideration, we are appealing to the NCC to give Nigerian subscribers a three-month one-way final warning extension on SIM cards registration. (i.e. subscribers to be able to receive calls).”
But in an interview with The Guardian, the Director of Public Affairs at NCC, Dr. Tony Ojobo, re-affirmed the commitment of NCC to disconnecting every unregistered SIM by June 30.
“There cannot be any extension. June 30 is definite”, he stated.
Investigations have shown that with Nigerians putting calls through both intra- and inter- networks, they might have parted with about N444.6billion.
The N444.6 billion estimate was arrived at using the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for 2012 estimated at N949 by Business Monitor International, BMI, -a United States-based research firm.
ARPU is the average industry benchmark for estimated spending of a telecoms subscriber to get services usually on a monthly basis.
Going by the industry’s ARPU by BMI, therefore, The Guardian’s calculation revealed that over N444.6 billion was spent by subscribers on the purchase of airtime to make calls on their phones in the first quarter in Nigeria.
Earlier in the year, the ALTON Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo, said the ARPUs were falling.
Though Adebayo, an engineer, could not give a precise figure, he noted that “ARPU varies for different members. But it is not on the rise, but dropping, which puts the operators in bad situation about return on investments.”
Statistically, active telephone subscriptions in Nigeria grew from 113.1 million in December 2012 to reach 114.4 million, 116.6 million, 117.2 million and to 119.3 million in January, February, March and April respectively.
However, the total connected telephone lines in the country now stand at 164.8 million at the end of April 2013, having increased from 161.9 million, 159.8 million and 154.5 million in January, February and March in the first quarter.
Multiplying the combined active subscription data at 467.5 million by N949 ARPU, it equals N444.6 billion, which might have been spent on telephone calls.
Indeed, between December 2012 and April 2013, about 6.2 million additional lines were added to various networks, which is a growth of 7.2 per cent.
Nigeria’s teledensity as at Q1 stood at 85.25 per cent from 80.85 in December 2012.
Teledensity is the percentage of connected lines in relation to the population at a given period of time and its growth is proportional to the growth in subscriber base.
The industry’s installed capacity has reached 237.4 million as at April 2013. The figure stood at 237.3 million; 226.6 million and 226.6 million in January, February and March respectively.
Installed capacity is the total number of telephone lines which telecoms networks have built their network capacity to accommodate at a particular period of time.
According to the data, while GSM networks increased their combined active subscriptions from 111.1 million in January to 116.3 million at the end of April, both the CDMA and operators decreased from 2.8 million in January to 2.6 million in April while fixed wired/wireless operators also declined from 410,664 lines to 396,939 lines.
Source: Guardian
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