By Benjamin Amu and Omolara Beyioku

Lagos. November 19, 2008. The Nigerian telecoms market crossed the 57 million subscriber mark at the end of the third quarter of this year just as mobile CDMA operators doubled up their aggressive drive to be competitive in the fast-growth mobile industry.

According to the latest subscriber information released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), at the end of Q3, the mobile GSM sector recorded a steady growth peaking at a total of 51,710,456 lines as against 43,786,542 and 47,897,527 lines in Q1 and Q2 respectively.

Reflecting the new drive by the mobile CDMA sector for a share of the growing mobile market, operators in this segment grossed a total of 4,125,826 lines in Q3 as against 2,113,520 lines in Q2. The Q1 subscriber base for the sector was 567,185 lines.

However, the fixed wired/wireless market recorded a downturn in subscription at the end of Q3 with the figure dropping as low as 1,239,382 lines from 1,545,984 lines and 1,602,102 lines in Q2 and Q1 respectively.

Meanwhile, as at 2007, the nation’s installed capacity was 84,663,611 lines but at Q1, 2008 it has risen to 88,471,789 lines. Also the growth was sustained from 94,985,725 lines in Q2, 2008 to 99,981,322 lines in Q3, 2008.

The number of mobile GSM connected lines grew year-on-year from 2001 through 2006 from 266,461 lines; 1,569,050 lines; 3,149,472 lines; 9,174,209 lines; 18,295,896 lines and 32,184,861 lines respectively.

During the same time frame, fixed wired/wireless connected lines were 866,782 lines; 702,000 lines; 872,473 lines; 1,027,519 lines; 1,223,258 lines and 1,673,161 lines respectively.

From year 2007 through to Q3, 2008 the nation’s telecoms market has witnessed growth in active subscriber lines from 41,975,275 to 57,075,664.

Among the big three in the mobile GSM market, MTN Nigeria recently announced that it had achieved a 20 million subscriber base at Q3, 2008, ranking the mobile cellular operator owned by South Africa’s MTN Group, the market leader in Nigeria.

Zain Nigeria, owned by Zain Group of Kuwait says it is the market’s number two player having recorded 15.9 million lines at Q3, 2008, the company says.

However, before Glo’s launch into other West Africa sub-region, Glo had said it recorded a subscriber base of over 13 million lines. Its Q3 subscriber information could not be obtained by Technology Times before press time.

The nation’s total installed capacity of 99,981,322 lines shows that the market is headed for the 100-million mark following the expansion in the build-out of telecoms infrastructure within the last seven years.

The increase in this sector of the economy proves that the aggression in the telecommunication industry is increasingly growing year after year if not month after month.

Analysts reckon that the explosive growth have been driven largely by aggressive and big operators, enabling policy and regulatory telecoms environment, large population, among others.

The growth since the revolution of the telecoms sector in 2001 had liberated the sector resulting in competition amongst operators and had thus brought about very substantial benefits to subscribers in terms of much lower tariff and wider variety of offerings.

It is evident that the GSM operators had been a major contributor to the growth of telecoms in Nigeria thereby playing a huge role in the development of the nation’s economy.

To a large extent, the effect of the deregulation of the telecommunications sector over the last few years had been largely positive, giving rise to: increased level of private sector participation,   increased range and quality of service available to customers, effective lowering of cost of acquiring and using the services, among other benefits.

The government of Nigeria on the hand had also played its part by allowing both local and foreign investors to invest in its telecoms industry.

Attributing to this growth, the Group CEO, MTN Group, Phuthuma Nhleko, said recently that, "we are satisfied with the subscriber growth across our operations. As competition increases, MTN continues to explore growth opportunities."

Below is the summary of operators’ performance between 2007and Q3, 2008.

_{Source: Technology Times Intelligence Unit/ NCC}