The latest subscriber data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has shown that Nigeria's telecommunications industry’s teledensity has hit 68.1 per cent, while the total number of mobile connected lines in the country has climbed to 127.2 million. This hit is however, is not a surpising one as a one time report made by the Association of Wordwide Mobile Phone Operators has it that Africa (of which Nigeria is a major player) tops continent using mobile phones in the world.

Specifically, the data, which is the November 2011 edition informed that, the country’s telecoms teledensity grew from 64.2 per cent in January 2011 to 68.1 per cent by November, while the total connected lines rose from 114.2 million to 127.2 within the same period.

Teledensity is the number of landline telephones in use for every 100 individuals living within an area. A teledensity greater than 100 means there are more telephones than people.

Furthermore, the NCC statistics explained that from the 127.2 million, the active mobile subscriptions in the country stood at 95.4 million. The GSM operators have 89.9 million subscribers; the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators have 4.78 million subscriptions while the Fixed Wired/Wireless operators can only lay claims to only 753,383 users.

From the NCC’s statistics, it was observed while the GSM operators continued on an upward swing, but both the CDMA and Fixed Wired/Wireless subscriptions slide further.

For instance, the CDMA operators as at January 2011 had active subscriptions of 6.18 million but went down drastically to 4.78 million by November 2011, which is about 1.4 million mobile subscription losses. Same goes for the Fixed Wired/Wireless, which had 1.03 million users in January 2011 and declined to 753,383 by November of the same period.

According to analyst, the challenges faced especially by the CDMA operators, the slide in their subscriptions would have resulted to about N10 billion loss based on the Average Revenue Per User in Nigeria currently put at N1,000 per month.

Meanwhile, the former Executive Vice-Chairman, NCC, Dr. Ernest Ndukwe, had urged the Federal Government to increase the country‘s teledensity from the current level to 100 per cent.

This, he said, was necessary if the country must achieve the Vision 2020, as well as meet the Millennium Development Goals.

He said: ”Nigeria still needs to grow her teledensity figure from the current level of over 50 per cent to 100 per cent to achieve the Vision 2020 targets.

“We must reach all parts of the country with both voice and data carrying infrastructure. It is instructive to note that today, over 70 countries in the world have passed the 100 per cent teledensity level.”

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