Connected telephone lines in the? country has reached 136,038,021 in the month of April, up from 134,913,614 in March this year.
?New figures released yesterday by the telecom regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) indicated that despite the poor quality of service (QoS) in recent times active lines stood at 101,077,658.
The figures which were gathered from all the operators of global system for mobile communications (GSM), code division multiple access (CDMA) and fixed wireless/wireline service providers are coming at a time the operators are battling with myriad of problems which have affected their quality of service (QoS) provisions.
Mobile operators have waged battle on several fronts including government regulatory agencies like the NCC and the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) to enforce sanctions for poor quality of service and telecom mast locations, multiple taxations from state governments and vandalisation of its fibre optic cables by road construction companies.
According to the NCC statistics, Nigeria’s teledensity stood at 72.20 per cent in April whereas in March and February it was 70.82 per cent and 69.01 per cent respectively. Also the installed capacity of all the operators was put at 199,639,372 in April while it was 176,662,992 in March this year.
The figures gleaned from the regulator showed that GSM mobile had 120,506,771 connected lines; CDMA mobile had 13,207,770 while fixed wired/wireless networks had 2,323,480. Figures on actives lines showed that GSM mobile had 96,606,054; CDMA mobile had 3,904,846 while fixed wired/wireless had 566,758. Both the CDMA mobile and fixed wired/wireless networks lost substantial subscribers between April and March this year.
CDMA mobile subscribers consecutively decreased in February, March and April while their counterparts in GSM mobile added subscribers. CDMA mobile comprising Visafone, Starcomms and Multi-Links recorded 3,904,846 in April; 4,013,698 in March and 4,031,820 in February. CDMA mobile has seen its active subscriber base decrease from 5,836,169 million from May 2011 to 3,904,846 million as at April 2012.
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