MTN emerges biggest loser as internet war deepens

MTN Nigeria has emerged the biggest loser among the four leading telecom firms operating in Nigeria as millions of subscribers dumped the y’ello network all through the three months of first quarter of 2021, according to analysis of the telecommunications industry data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

In the first quarter of this year, 2.41 million subscribers dumped MTN, as its data users dropped from 63.98 million subscribers in January to 61.57 million at the end of March – in February, it recorded 62.84 million subscribers.

Airtel wasn’t far behind as it lost 2.25 million subscribers in Q1 2021. This pushed its subscriber base down to 37.77 million in March, against the 38.95 million it reported in February, and 40.03 million subscribers in January.

Despite losing 1.18 million subscribers within the first three months of this year, Globacom remains ahead of Airtel, which it surpassed last year. Glo’s subscribers declined to 38.80 million in March.

This is below the 39.70 million subscribers that were using its data service in February, and the 39.99 million subscribers it ended January with.

9mobile shocked the telecoms industry as only 461,175 subscribers stopped using the company’s data service. This caused 9mobile’s subscriber base to decline to 6.41 million at the end of March.

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