Nigeria’s next generation network, Globacom, is continuing on its upward swing in the area of internet subscriber acquisition in 2016 by again garnering the lion share of new internet subscribers in January.
According to the January 2016 report just released by the telecom industry regulator on its website, Globacom led in new subscriber acquisition with a total of 354,178 subscribers joining its internet customer base. The figure represents 94.7% of the total number of 373,835 new internet customers acquired by all the four major operators in the country.
On the other hand, two operators lost considerable share of their internet subscribers. For instance, MTN Nigeria maintained a consistent slide in its data customer base with 1,705,878 internet users leaving its network in January. Etisalat also lost 94,115 internet customers in January, while Airtel gained 19,657 new subscribers in the month.
An analysis of the last 12 months showed that Globacom added a total of 7,251,657 new internet users, representing 53 percent of the total 13,644 million new customers who subscribed to internet services of the four major operators. Etisalat came second with a total of 5,431,190 new internet customers, while Airtel finished third with 961,548 new data customers in the 12 months period.
MTN, on its part, recorded a net loss of 1,059,160 data subscribers in the last one year, as more data subscribers left the network than those who joined it.
The January 2016 statistics are consistent with the figures released for the last quarter of 2015. A breakdown of the industry figures for that quarter showed that it was only Globacom that recorded an increase in its internet subscriber base in the last quarter of 2015. The network had 23,285,454 internet users in October, 24,952,559 in November and 25,082,066 in December, which is an addition of 3.2m new internet subscribers in the quarter.
On the other hand MTN, Airtel and Etisalat all lost subscribers within the period. MTN which had a total of 41,835,294 internet subscribers at the beginning of October 2015 had 39,924,737 data subscribers at the end of December, a loss of almost 2 million customers.
Similarly, Airtel which began the last quarter of 2015 with 17,730,955 internet customers ended with 16,835,952, a loss of nearly 900,000 subscribers.
Experts believe Globacom is reaping from massive investment in international connectivity via the Glo 1 undersea cable and its extensive fibre optic cable across the country.
This has apparently enabled the operator to make available a wide range of innovative products and services riding on its massive data capacity and expansive, nationwide infrastructure
