Globacom, national carrier and India’s Bharti Airtel, maintained a stiff battle for the number two spot in Nigeria’s vibrant telecommunications industry last year with a little over half a million subscribers deciding the winner. Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest mobile operator, has also maintained its traditional telecoms market lead with over 59,797,224 active connections followed by Globacom with 28,219,089, latest Nigerian telecoms industry data for Year 2014 released weekend by the industry regulator has shown.
Globacom gained 662,545 active connections over Airtel 27,556,544 to claim the number two spot in another year that saw telecommunications companies, both large and small, slug it out for marketshare and revenue.
When Globacom, the country’s national carrier, launched a whole new range of VAS in April 2014, building on an already rich mobile content portfolio, market analysts at Business Monitor International (BMI) viewed the strategic move as an effort to encourage greater usage of data services, in order to boost ARPUs (Average Revenue Per User) and reduce churn following its drop into third market position behind Airtel in the first quarter of 2014.
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Since then, Globacom has been upgrading its 3G coverage, from 43 percent to 90 percent of its entire network in order to provide the needed capacity to provide sophisticated VAS offerings. These investments, according to market analysts, were perhaps the determining factor behind the telecoms firm’s impressive subscriptions growth rate during the three months to June 2014.
Other telecommunications operators are beginning to tow the same line. Last month, MTN, announced that, it is engaging in a full scale incursion into the digital business landscape. “With more smartphones in the hands of more Nigerians, there would be greater innovation with regards to creating new and better content and application services that everybody can use”, said Ugo Okoye, chief executive officer, iConcept Limited, in an interview. According to him, the VAS sector has witnessed huge growth in recent times because telcos no longer rely solely on voice services for revenues. Still on the regulators’ latest industry figures, out of the overall 139,047,741 active lines in 2014, mobile GSM firms posted 136,676,606 active lines; mobile CDMA networks posted 2,187,845 and fixed line services posted 183,290.
Overall, the telecoms market closed in 2014 with an overall 139,047,741 active phone connections representing teledensity coverage of 99.32 of the population of Nigeria. Out of the overall 139,047,741 active lines, mobile GSM companies posted 136,676,606 active lines; mobile CDMA networks posted 2,187,845 and fixed line services posted 183,290. The market data also suggest that across board, mobile operators are leaving nothing to chance in this highly competitive market as they have strengthened their built respective networks to accommodate new subscriber additions.
Ben Uzor, with wire reports
