The management of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has assured that apart from raising activities in the Value Added Service (VAS) space in Nigeria, the newly licensed VAS aggregator licencees will improve innovation, local content, employment opportunities, and increase in income stream to both network operators and content developers.
The NCC said the 10 new additions became necessary to deepen the market, and further improve scalability, with VAS market value now at $200 million, but projected to hit $500 million by 2024.
Among the new players in the sub-sector include I-Cell Multimedia Limited; Nina-Jojer Limited; 21st Century Technologies Limited; Nitroswitch Limited; HML Consulting Limited; and Iykejordan Limited. Others are Cognys Systems Limited, Perpetual Communications Limited, Mobile Intelligence Limited, and Aerandir Technologies Nigeria Limited.
The new NCC document further averred that within the year, over 24 million validly registered subscriber records were scrubbed/cleaned-up (de-duplicated) via Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), in fulfilment of the mandate to establish a credible database of telephone subscribers.