The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that active subscriptions for voice telecommunications services in Nigeria rose to 224.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.
According to NBS, this shows an increase of 0.96% compared to the 222.5 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2022.
This is contained in the NBS Telecoms Data: Active Voice and Internet per State, Porting and Tariff Information report for Q4 2023, released on Friday.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the report showed that active voice subscribers increased by 1.32% from the 221.7 million recorded in Q3 2023.
According to the NBS data, active subscriptions in Nigeria stood at 163.8 million in Q4 of 2023 compared to the 154,847,901 reported in Q4 of 2022.
“This represents a 5.81% increase in active internet subscriptions year-on-year, while on a quarter-on-quarter basis, active internet subscribers grew by 2.29% from the 160.17 million recorded in Q3 of 2023,’’ it stated.
On state-by-state analysis, the report showed that Lagos state had the highest number of active voice subscribers in Q4 2023 with 26.7 million followed by Ogun with 13 million and Kano with 12.3 million.
On the other hand, Bayelsa recorded the least number of 1.5 million voice subscribers, followed by Zamfara and Gombe with 2.77 million and 2.78 million respectively.
Similarly, the report said Lagos state had the highest number of active internet subscribers in Q4 2023 with 18.9 million followed by Ogun with 9.5 million and Kano with 9
Bayelsa recorded the least number of internet subscribers with 1.2 million, followed by Zamfara and Gombe with 1.9 million and 2.1 million
The NBS report showed that MTN maintained its status quo as the telecommunication service provider with the highest share of subscriptions in Q4 2023.
Meanwhile, data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for November 2023, showed that Active subscriptions for the internet across mobile, fixed and VOIP networks in Nigeria stood at 162 million in the month.
The November internet subscription figure represents a 0.6% increase when compared with the 161.1 million recorded in October.
The NCC’s data reveals that the mobile network operators MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile maintained their dominance of the internet market with 161.5 million internet subscriptions as of November. This represents 99.6% of the total subscriptions
VOIP operators, which include Smile Communications and Ntel accounted for 354,909 internet subscriptions as of November, while other internet service providers (ISPs) accounted for 208,612 internet subscriptions.