Telecoms subscribers in Nigeria spent about N602.6 billion on airtime for their
phones to make calls in the first five months of the year, spanning January to
May, New Telegraph investigations have revealed.

The figure is arrived at using the subscriber data released monthly by the
telecoms industry regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and
the current industry’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) provided by the
operators.

figures released by the telecom regulator. It was gathered that each of the
monthly subscription represents the total number of active lines on all mobile
networks in the country. These include the Global System for Mobile
Communications (GSM) operators; the Code Division Multiple Access
operators as well as the fixed wired/ wireless networks.

Two telecoms firms, MTN and Etisalat, put the current average spending by
subscribers monthly at $6 (N936). Further investigation revealed that
subscribers spent estimated N191.5 billion in January with based on the
number of subscribers, which stood at 127 million and the ARPU averaging
N936.

With the same ARPU, subscribers’ spending moved to an estimated N120.7
billion in February; N118.8 billion in March; N121 billion in April and in May, the
airtime expenditure was conservatively estimated at N112.7 billion.

Subscribers’ expenditure thus adds up to estimated N602.6 billion for the five
months, indicating the premium paid to telecoms services by the consumers.
Reacting to the findings in a telephone interview, President, National
Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Mr. Deolu Ogunbanjo, said
telecoms services were taking priority position in the daily needs of Nigerians.

He said: “While I may not be able to tell you categorically how much we spend
monthly on phone calls as subscribers, it is understandable that Nigerians
spend a sizeable chunk of their incomes on telecoms services, which are
replacing travel expenditures for the people.”

Ogunbanjo said, next to shelter, food and other needs of man “is the need to
communicate, which saves us a lot of time that would have been wasted
travelling from one place to another to see relatives or do transactions with
business associates.”

He stated that the huge amount of money expended daily on telephone
services by Nigerians had informed the insistence by the consumer rights
group that “subscribers must get value for their money through the provision
of quality services by the operators.”

However, President, Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators (ALTON), Mr.
Gbenga Adebayo, said the expenditure by subscribers had even reduced
drastically in the last 13 years of telecoms regulation.

“You will recall that, in this country, we have made calls for close to N100 and
today, we are witnessing a decrease in ARPU and in fact, today, you can make
calls for as low as N10 and also send text messages for as low as N4 he stated.

The ARPU is a financial performance benchmark in the telecoms industry that
measures the average monthly revenue generated by operators from each
customer.

According to official industry data by the telecoms watchdog, the industry
recorded 127.6 million active mobile subscriptions last January and this figure
increased to 129 million at the end of February. the number declined to 127 million but picked up to 129.3 million in April and at the end of May, the figure stood at 131.1 million.

The May subscriber data is the latest official promoted by the regulator is
driving cost of telecoms services down, stressing that much more reduction is
expected in the coming years.

Acknowledging how capital-intensive telecoms infrastructure deployment is,
the NCC boss had recently said only MTN was making profits in the market. He
said other operators were still putting more investment in infrastructure rollout
to cover more locations in the country.

MTN currently leads other network operators in the area of subscriber base
and revenue generation in the country.

Official data show that MTN currently has about 57.2 million telephone users
on its network. Airtel Nigeria trailed with 25.5 million; Globacom is third with
23.4 million while Etisalat has 18.5 million telephone users on its network.
This was as at the end of March when the latest data was released by the
regulator.

www.newtelegraphonline.com

The last time I checked, customers are still faithful but Telecom providers and NCC have been screwing them up with unfavourable services.

Also note that phone calls damage the brain, so be careful how much time you spend on the phone. Read this little article Here about how phone calls can damage one's brain

See money. Well am aint surprise on the statistics, when someone will load 200# for Chioma, 200# for Nkechi and 100# for family members

Those Nigeria Criminals Commision NCC should shut the fvck up, they are the once conniving with the telecoms coy to exploit Nigeria's, why won't they make trillions with their deferent method of defrauding Nigerians.

Mtn send you text message of win million, win billions, with 100 naira per SMS, you answer 100 questions and you are still answering. We would be better without this NCC people.

We pay too much fir everything. Blamed bad leadership.

And they say Nigerians are poor? Something is not adding up here.

The study should also let us know the percentage of Nigerians which accounted for the bulk figure...Could be a few criminals spending their loot.

that is money



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But they repay our loyalty with bad services.


Though i blame NCC for allowing that.

Just for calls? Without even calculating the amount we spend on their slow browsing

gawd!!! dts y i dn't pity them when they suffer any technical hitch dt results in free calls, free data or hacked accounts and codes..esp, mumu emptyhen netwrk..and their jazz too strong, i'v found it difficult to dump'em,.cos if i do.,d figures in d nxt 5 months will be..N500bill nt N602bill..

Why didn't they release a statement on how much we spend on data in a month? Awon alatenuje!

And wats our reward..... we cannot eat figures na.

The money these people are making illegally should be close to that amount. Sometimes airtime mysteriously disappears from my phone especially MTN. They automatically subscribe useless caller tunes for me which I never activated.

M ature T hieves N etwork

Hello everyone!! I'm d newest guy on here.
Wishing myself a nice time on NL.
Guess u all wish me d same.
Peace!!!
Wow!! I hit first page on my first day...

What are we going to do now.. Don't make calls again.. Don't subscribe on your phone.. (how will u access nairaland then)

These are things u can't do without.. Either u like it or not

Business call 20 %
Girlfriends 70 %
Boyfriends 3 % (most are flashing)
Family 2 %
Friends 4 %
Others 1 %

Toluchenko: Hello everyone!! I'm d newest guy on here.
Wishing myself a nice time on NL.
Guess u all wish me d same.
Peace!!!

Call customer care for more details..

Are we(Flashers) included?

Just asking becos i want to increase my flashing.

Hmmmm...
All theae gurls needs to start subscribing their fones by demselves.. m done wit sponsorship...

Man, nigerians are this rich? Happy to be one of them though

Omo this is seven much ooooooo, the telecom company keep making money and Nigerians are calling since 2002..............call tariff need to be reduce men!!!!!!

And how many of those calls are good quality calls?!



Sometimes, people spend 100 Naira on calls that should not have lasted more than 10 Seconds because they are too busy moving around searching for signal and shouting 'Ehn!! Ehn!! Can you hear me?! Is it clear?! I'm sorry I cant hear you please Call me back..

ERCROSS: A.........

tchigofigo: ..

ERCROSS: A.........

I see u

Jesus Christ!

And the foreign media will say ''All nigerians are living below 1dollar a day''...The truth is until we learn taking our statistics for ourselves,they won't stop lying against us..A poor man won't leave food and buy recharge card would he?

Globacom with more subscribers than Etisalat Joke of the Year.... I probably have about 3 glo users in my contact list out of over 500 contacts....

Mtcheeew