According to a report released by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the number of connected lines across the mobile networks of MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile rose to 319.6 million in October.
However, the statistics also show that only 244.3 million of these lines were in active use according to what was reported by NCC. This will imply that 104.9 million lines on the networks have become inactive.
A mobile line is considered inactive if the subscriber has not used it for at least 90 days to place or receive calls, access data services, or both.
As these lines don’t bring in any money for telecom operators within the specified time frame, they are isolated from active lines.
The market share of the total active lines, MTN accounted for 38.85% with a total of 83.2 million active subscriptions by the end of October.
Globacom maintained its second position with a market share of 27.82%, having recorded 59.6 million active lines in the period under review.
Airtel’s market share stood at 27.37% as of October, with 58.6 million active subscriptions.
9mobile, on the other hand, had only a 5.96% share of the mobile market with 12.7 million subscriptions.
Mobile networks still have a lot of inactive lines, but that number has dropped dramatically over the past year. There were 139 million idle lines in the network as of August 2021.
Keep in mind that despite the rise in active users and new activations, telecom carriers have always had lines that are not in use. The impossibility of many users to retrieve their lines between December 9, 2020, and April 19, 2021, as well as the ban on new SIM registration, made the problem worse.
Meanwhile, the gradual reduction in the number of inactive lines could also be attributable to a new SIM policy introduced by the NCC.
The NCC recently declared that subscribers whose lines have been inactive for 12 months would forfeit them.
“Subscriber numbers that have not generated revenue by originating calls will automatically be recovered after 12 consecutive months,” the Commission stated in the new policy document.
