Airtel Nigeria has toppled Globacom to become the second largest telecommunications service provider in Nigeria in terms of the number of active subscribers for telephony services.

This is contained in Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) industry statistics report published for the month of January analyzed by TheNewsGuru.

The data showed a marginal difference of 98,561 that an industry expert has said has a lot of significance in the telecoms industry, especially owing to the fact that it is the first time in a period of twenty months Glo would be dislodged from the second spot.

The statistics showed that while the number of active subscribers on Airtel is now 38,326,579 raking in 26.10% of the GSM market share, the number of subscribers on Glo is 38,228,018 (26.03%) and that of 9mobile is 16,867,579 (11.49%), with MTN retaining top spot with a total of 53,442,969 (36.39%) number of active subscribers.

TheNewsGuru reports the statistics also revealed that Internet users in the country increase to 100.2 million in January, from 98.4 million in December 2017.

The data showed an increase of 1.9 million new subscribers in the country.

Airtel and MTN gained more internet subscribers during the month in review, while Glo and 9mobile were the big losers.

The breakdown revealed that MTN gained the most with over 1 million new internet users increasing its subscription in January to over 37 million from 36 million recorded in December 2017.

Airtel also gained 84,269 new internet users in January amounting to about 25 million users as against about 24 million users in December 2017

9mobile, however, lost 60,652 internet users in January, decreasing its subscription to 11,278,187 as against 11,338,839 recorded in December 2017.

The data showed in January, Globacom lost 70,701, showing a loss of 26,927,116, from 26,997.817 recorded in December 2017.