Airtel rises on regulator’s rating

GOING by the latest statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Airtel Telecommunications Ltd is currently fighting to regain the number two largest telecommunications firm’s spot in Nigeria by subscription base.

Airtel, which came in 2001 as Econet, currently owns 21 per cent market share like Globacom, which began operations in 2003. Several changes in Airtel’s nomenclature may have also impacted on its growth.

While Globacom, which last weekend in Lagos, formally signed a partnership with Vodafone of UK on service improvement in Nigeria has 31.30 million subscribers, Airtel, which recently cut its Nigeria’s staff strength by about 30 per cent, having lost $170 million in its African operations, still gives services to 31.13 million, leaving a gap of 171, 847 between the duo.

Despite its current challenges with the Nigerian authority over Subscribers Identification Module (SIM) cards infractions, MTN still maintains the lead as Nigeria’s largest telecommunications firm, the biggest market for the South African based group.

MTN, which started operations in the country about 14 years ago, services 62.5 million subscribers, with 42 per cent market share. Etisalat, which entered the Nigerian market space in 2005, has demonstrated that by been innovative, it can gather market share.

Etisalat with 16 per cent market share, services 23.5 million subscribers in Nigeria.

According to NCC’s ‘Annual Industry Statistics Report 2014’, while Globacom has 6,677 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), Airtel maintains 6,186, Etisalat has 4,756 and MTN owns 12,557.

NCC claimed that the quartet increased the BTS figure by 6.6 per cent from 26, 289 in 2013 to 30,176 by 2014.

The report noted that as at December 2014 total outgoing mobile to international traffic was 1,642,981,283.56 while total incoming mobile to international traffic was 2,775,774,791.19. MTN reported the highest outgoing traffic of 891,000,000.00 and the highest incoming traffic of 1,944,000,000.00for the period under review.

Globacom recorded 207, 093, 638.00 outgoing traffic with 374,563, 869.00, while Airtel had 315, 755,070.00 outgoing traffic and 425, 017, 976.00 incoming traffic.

In terms of local and national telephone traffic, NCC said as at end of 2014, there was 32,216,272,310.83 outgoing traffic, while total Incoming was 32,631,856,833.06. MTN reported the highest outgoing traffic of 10,074,000,000 and the highest incoming traffic of 15,699,000,000 for the period under review.

Globacom had 7, 608, 256, 463.01 outgoing traffic and recorded 5, 065,958,826.28 incoming local traffic. Airtel, a close competition had 7, 042,598,992.00 outgoing traffic and 6,932,463,561.00 as incoming calls. Etisalat recorded 7,491,416,855.82 and 4,934,434,445.78 incoming and outgoing local traffic respectively.