Telecoms operators activated new 1.57 million mobile subscriptions in February as active mobile users in Nigeria rose to 219.7 million from 218.1 million in January. Subscription statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) released yesterday, revealed this. Recall that the operators had, according to previous data, had lost about six million lines between December 2023 and January 2024, in the wake of the implementation of the NIN-SIM directive. Analysis of the data showed that MTN is still the largest operator in the country. It added 1.1 million new subscriptions in February. This brought its subscriptions figure to 80.9 million. Airtel also added 434,175 new subscriptions in the month under review. This pushed up its subscription database from 62.6 million in January to 63 million in February. Although not as much as MTN and Airtel, Globacom also recorded a gain as it added 176,756 new subscriptions in the month. Globacom had 62.1 million active subscriptions in February compared with 61.9 million in the previous month. The data however, showed that 9mobile, in the period under review, lost 151,517 subscriptions. It currently serves 13.6m active subscriptions. Meanwhile, while the telecoms operators had carried out two major disconnections of unlinked SIMs by February 28 and March 29, against the April 15 date for the fresh deactivation of less than five lines linked to an unverified NIN, telecoms operators have been asked to ensure the complete verification exercise by July 31, 2024. To further aid the process, NCC is working to unveil a self KYC app, which would help subscribers, whose NIN verification failed due to biometric mismatch to be able to correct the errors as it were. This is expected to help expedite, simplify, and streamline the NIN-SIM linkage process. It will also simplify the SIM registration process for all devices that are linked to the Internet of Things (IoTs) that are used for car tracking, among others.
