How recession compelled Nigerians to run away from internet bundles in February
Pundits have traced the rising drop in Nigerian internet users to decimating disposal income driven by the forces of recession and inflationary squeeze in the economy.
This can be noticed from the latest data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) which indicated that Nigeria’s telecommunications networks lost 1,275,573 internet users in February.
According to the data, massive drop in the month of February dotted internet users on both Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks dropped from 91,304,755 in January to 90,029,182 in February.
Details show that out of 90,029,182 internet users in February, 89,998,873 were on GSM networks, while 30,309 were on CDMA networks.
Whereas the GSM service providers lost 1,275,573 internet customers by recording 89,998,873 users in February as against 91,274,446 they recorded in January, the CDMA operators retained 30,309 internet subscribers in February as recorded in January.
An expert who spoke to Business Hilights on the development explained that “Why CDMA drop is not high like the GSM is that majority of CDMA internet subscribers are corporate bodies while GSM internet users are mainly phone users who can decide to abandon purchase of internet bundles at will.
NCC statistics further disclosed that MTN leading internet subscribers with 30,300,705 subscribers in February was the highest loser with a loss of 714,700 internet subscribers. This is after standing on a towering 31,015,405 in January.
Also Globacom had 26,932,485 internet customers, but lost 143,787 users from the 27,076,272 who were on the network in January.
To further confirm that there was an aggregate drop in data usage across all networks which points to earlier suspected reasons of recession and inflation induced economic squeeze, Airtel came down to 19,468,684 internet users in February, after losing 149,801, from its January high of 19,618,485.
Debt-ridden embattled Etisalat had 13,296,999 internet users in February but became the second highest loser of subscribers after MTN with a decrease of 267,285 from its 13,564,284 users in January.
CDMA retained their however lower subscriber base in January as both resilient Multi-Links and Visafone, had a joint total of 30,309 internet users on their networks in February.
Details show that just as Visafone had 30,305 internet users, almost dead Multi-Links still had only four subscribers.
It was not clear whether Multi-Links can sustain the four subscribers in future as analysts say running the company for the sake of four subscribers is not a reasonable business sense in all fronts.
