Recession: Internet Subscribers Dropped by 536,346 in December - NCC

The Nigerian Com­munications Com­mission (NCC) says the number of in­ternet users in Nige­ria’s telecommunica­tions networks drifted to 91,910,341 in Dec. 2016.
The telecommunica­tions industry umpire made the disclosure in its Monthly Internet Sub­scribers Data for Novem­ber, obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
The data indicated that internet users on both Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Code Division Mul­tiple Access (CDMA) networks dropped by 536,346 in December as against 92,446,687 users recorded in November.

It showed that out of the 91,910,341 inter­net users in December, 91,880,032 were on GSM networks, while 30,309 users were on CDMA networks.
Also, the GSM service providers lost 536,346 in­ternet customers after re­cording 91,880,032 users in December as against 92,416,378 it recorded in November.
The CDMA operators had retained 30,309 in­ternet subscribers in De­cember as recorded in November 2016.
The data revealed that MTN had 31,753,369 subscribers browsing the internet on its network in the month under review.
It explained that MTN recorded a drop 264,410 of internet subscribers in December after recording 32,017,779 in November.
According to the data, Globacom has 27,010,178 customers surfing the net on its network in Decem­ber, revealing a decline of 112,714 users, from the 27,122,892 that surfed the internet on the net­work in November.
Airtel had 19,363,545 internet users in Decem­ber, adding 219,845 cus­tomers to its November record of 19,143,700.
The data also showed that Etisalat had 13,752,940 customers who browsed the internet in December revealing a decrease of 379,067 users against the 14,132,007 us­ers recorded in Novem­ber.
The NCC data revealed that the CDMA oper­ators, Multi-Links and Visafone, had a joint to­tal of 30,309 internet us­ers on their networks in December, maintaining the same record of No­vember.
According to the data, Visafone has 30,305 cus­tomers surfing the inter­net in December, while Multi-Links has just four internet users.
The decrease in the use of the internet in Decem­ber showed that service providers had a great job of ensuring that more Ni­gerians embrace data as the next revolution.