NCC says inactive mobile lines in Nigeria declined by 13% in 2022

From Abubakar Y Ojimaojo, ABUJA

The number of unused or abandoned lines across the networks of MTN Nigeria, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile declined by 13% in 2022, showing that more Nigerians used their lines in the year.
According to the latest subscriber data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), inactive lines on mobile networks stood at 94.4 million as of December 2022, down from 109 million recorded at the end of 2021.
The NCC data revealed that the four mobile network operators had a total of N316.6 million connected lines as of December 2022. However, active lines across the networks at the end of the month stood at 2222.2 million. This shows that the telecom operators were able to generate revenue from 70% of their customers in the period under review.
A mobile line is considered to be inactive if it is not used by the subscriber to make or receive calls and/or access data services for 90 days, at the minimum. Such lines are separated from active lines as they generate no revenue for telecom operators within the stated period.
Impacted by government policy: Many Nigerians have had to abandon their mobile lines in 2021 as a result of the government’s policy that mandated every user of SIM-enabled devices to link their National Identification Number or be barred. While the deadline for the exercise was shifted several times from December 2020 until April 2022, millions of lines were affected as the government ordered the telcos to block unlinked lines.
In its 9-month financial results for the period ended December 2022, Airtel, for instance, reported that 13.6 million of its customers were barred due to non-submission of NIN information by the deadline of April 2022.
“As of December 2022, 6.2 million customers (46%) have subsequently submitted their NINs and 3.2 million customers (23%) have been fully verified and unbarred. Revenue growth for the first nine months of the year was impacted by the effect of barring outgoing voice calls in Nigeria for those customers who had not submitted their NINs. We estimate that this resulted in the loss of approximately $87 million of revenues in the nine months,” the company stated.