By Alex C
Fixed telephone operators in Nigeria have lost over 56 percent of their active lines in the past one year, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
The crisis engulfing the first national carrier, the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), has contributed immensely to the dearth of fixed-line services in the country.
Data from NCC reveal that the active fixed telephone lines in the country were 172,876 lines as of the end of April 2014. In 2013, the number of fixed telephone lines stood at 396,939 lines. This means that within a period of one year, the fixed operators lost 224,063 active lines. This also shows a decline of 56.45 percent in the number of active fixed telephone lines.
In 2014, Global System for Mobile Communications operators, also known as GSM operators, gained 10.63 million new subscribers. This shows 9.14 percent increase in the subscriber base of GSM operators.
Other marginal operators within the industry pushed the total number of subscriber lines in the country to 129,391,392 lines, as of April 2014. This means that the total number of subscription lines increased by 10.03 million within a period of one year. It was 119,356,665 lines a year before. This shows an increase of 7.76 percent in the total number of subscribers within the period of one year.
The decline of fixed telephony in the country is not helped by the rapid decline in the fortunes of operators that had hitherto offered fixed wireless telephony services. Recently, NCC listed some of the fixed operators as inactive. The operators include Starcomms Limited, Reliance Telecomms, Intercellular Nigeria Limited, MTS First Communications, and Disc Communications.
Others are WiTEL, O’Net (Odua Telecom), Rainbownet Limited, Monarch Communications, XS Broadband, Webcom, and of course, the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited. It is not all gloom and doom as the rising demand for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), especially from the enterprise side, is sparking off the resurgence of fixed-line telephony. Analysts are particularly optimistic that recent efforts by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to stimulate investment in broadband infrastructure deployment, as clearly defined in its recently approved national policy, will be the required catalyst needed to resuscitate Nigeria’s ailing fixed-line sub-sector.
VoIP is a form of communication that allows people to make phone calls over a broadband internet connection instead of typical analogue telephone lines. While the market for fixed-line services in Nigeria is huge, analysts say there is the need to strengthen the deployment of broadband infrastructure and the emergence of VoIP.
Research has shown that businesses in the country can get access to advanced voice services over the internet at a cost-effective price, hence this is a new growth area in Nigeria’s competitive telecoms market.