The recent statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), showed an improvement in the growth of telecoms subscriptions, which reached 169, 318,076, with a teledensity of 78.1 per cent as at January this year.
Although telecoms subscriptions had surpassed the 200 million mark to reach 224,713,710 with a teledensity of 103.66 per cent in December 2023, which was its peak period ever in the history of telecommunications in Nigeria, the figure however started dropping until it reached as low as 154,904,827 in September 2024.
The sharp drop has been attributed to several factors, prominent among them, were the deactivation of over 42 million SIM cards in five days in February 2024, and the rebasing of the telecoms sector in September 2024.
NCC had in February, March and April 2024, carried out phased disconnections of SIM cards that were not properly registered and not linked to the National Identification Number (NIN) of the SIM card holders.
In September 2024, during the rebasing of the telecoms sector, NCC also disconnected 40 million subscribers from a single network operator that erroneously increased its subscriber base.
