Telecom subscribers have increased intra-network mobile number portability in the country as no fewer than 25,363 porting activities were recorded across the network between January and October this year, according to a document obtained from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) at the weekend.
Mobile number portability (MNP) is a service that allows a cell phone or smartphone customer to change telecom carriers and keep the same phone number.
NCC said in furtherance of its efforts to promote competition, improve quality of service and ensure that consumers continue to enjoy good experience on the mobile networks it launched MNP service for GSM subscribers in April 2013. MNP enables consumers to switch networks without losing their cellular phone numbers.
For effective implementation of the scheme, the Commission had issued a licence to a consortium of three companies (Interconnect Limited, Saab Grinteck and Telecordia) in January 2012 to act as the Number Portability Clearing House (NPCH) for the industry.
According to the document, the total number of porting activities on the networks stood at 2994 in January while it was 1,465 in February. In March, it was 2,218, April- 1,357; May-3,679; June-2,935; July-2,602; August-2,389; September-2,934; and October-2,790.
The document also showed that MTN had the highest number of porting activities with 16,631, Airtel followed with 4,637 while Glo and 9mobile recorded 2,466 and 1,629 respectively.
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A further breakdown of the figures showed that Airtel recorded 398 transactions in January, 9mobile; 114, Glo; 0 and MTN 2,482. In February, Airtel had 371; 9mobile-116; Glo-35; and MTN-943 while in March, Airtel had 3,026; 9mobile-115; Glo-345; MTN—1,452.
In April, Airtel had 267; 9mobile-131; Glo-112 and MTN-847 while May figures showed that Airtel recorded 1,483 transactions; 9mobile -314; Glo-151; MTN-1,731. June figures showed Airtel with 356; 9mobile-324; Glo-298; MTN 2,047. In July, Airtel had 437; 9mobile-87; Glo-531 and MTN-1,547.
The document showed that in August, Airtel recorded 387 porting deals; 9mobile -106; Glo 279; MTN-1,617 while in September, Airtel had 285; 9mobile-167; Glo-442; and MTN-2040. In October, which is the last month covered by the regulator’s report, Airtel had 347; 9mobile-155; Glo-363; and MTN-1925.
According to the NCC, active telecom subscribers in Nigeria have grown from 400,000 in the 2000 pre-liberalisation era to 212.2 million post liberalisation.
The growth represented a teledensity of 111 per cent, while basic internet subscriptions grew from zero to 152.7 million within the period.
Broadband subscriptions have grown up to 86 million, representing 45.09 per cent penetration as at July this year.
The industry has also attracted over $70 billion investments, while the Information and Communications Technology sector contributed 18.9 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the second quarter of 2022.