Globacom Leads other Network provider in Internet Subscription, In March

LAGOS – Globacom  popularly known with motto; 'Rule your World' has  gained over 2.9 million internet sub­scribers in the month of March, beating its com­petitors, according to the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) recently released industry stats.

The total number of GSM internet subscribers stood at 136,203,231 in March, indicating an increase of about 4 million from amount of subscribers re­corded in February.

While Globacom was the high­est gainers, MTN gained 794,020 new subscribers raising the to­tal amount of its subscribers to 57,282,123. Airtel also gained 654,549 new subscribers to reach 36,827,677.


Visafone subscribers remained unchanged from 88,818 subscrib­ers recorded in February. 9mo­bile was the only loser as the telecom operator continued its string of losses dropping anoth­er 181,973 subscribers in March. 9mobile Subscribers now stands at 7,762,068.

Similarly, 9mobile retained is crown as the most favourable network for porters as 8,225 users joined the network from other op­erators. Airtel follows with about 5,594 incoming subscribers, while MTN and Globacom added 1,965 and 262 respectively.

On the other end, Airtel led the chart of outgoing subscrib­ers, about 6,466 subscribers left the mobile operator in March. Globacom follows with 3,748 subscribers lost while MTN also lost 3,701 subscribers. 9mobile was the least with just 1,756 lost subscribers.

NCC pegged the total number of mobile subscribers in the coun­try at 188,989,051 in March. This is a 1.84 million increase from the number of subscribers recorded in the preceding month.


Market leader, MTN with 73,573,788 subscribers contribut­ed 38.93% of the total number of subscribers in the country. Glo­bacom with 51,856,114 followed with about 27.44% while Airtel with 51,298,878 and 9mobile with 12,123,1185 comes behind with 27.14% and 6.41% respectively. Visafone with 137,086 subscribers had just 0.07%.

Of all the telcos, only 9mobile did not increase its subscriber base between March 2019 and March 2020, losing about 4.7 mil­lion subscribers instead.


Broadband penetration in the country rose to 39.90% in March, gaining 0.53% in a month. The number of 3G and 4G subscrib­ers rose to 76,163,674 from the 75,555,604 subscribers in Febru­ary.

In summary, mobile (GSM) op­erators accounted for 99.84% of the subscriber base in Nigeria. Fixed (Wireless/Wired) had about 0.06% while VoIP which includes Smile accounted for just 0.10%.