9mobile loses 2.7m subscribers in 2019

9mobile, Nigeria’s fourth-largest telecoms service provider, lost 2,743,322 subscribers between January and December 2019.

According to recent subscriber statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telco’s share of the market dropped to 7.4%.

In January 2019, the telco had 16,385,317 subscribers and by December, the figure had dropped to 13,641,995.

Apart from the period between January and March, when 9mobile recorded a short-lived upsurge in its number of subscribers, the drop remained consistent until the end of 2019.

While MTN also recorded a dip in its subscriber figures between January and April, the network provider maintains the highest market share (37.3%), adding 2,097,256 subscribers in 2019.

At the end of 2019, the telco had 68,762,634 subscribers.

Globacom retained its position as the second-largest telecommunications network in the country adding 6,096,414 subscribers between January and December.

In December, Glo, as the telco is referred to, had 51,700,052 subscribers from 45,603,638 in January.

Airtel, the country’s third-largest telco, ended 2019 with 50,186,988 subscribers.

This is an addition of 5,216,015 from the 44,970,973 it began the year with.

Visafone, a CDMA network which has transferred its subscribers to the GSM, ended the year with 134,518 subscribers.

In total, the telecommunications sector had 184,426,187 subscribers at the end of 2019.

Further analysis of the data provided by the NCC showed that 9mobile was the biggest gainer from porting; adding 77,492 subscribers between January and December 2019.

NCC introduced porting in April 2013; allowing subscribers to move from one network provider to the other without losing their telephone numbers.

In 2019, MTN gained 23,851 subscribers though porting, Airtel added 30,026 subscribers and Globacom, 7,653 subscribers.