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.
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