Poor services: 16m customers dumped Airtel, MTN, 9Mobile in 8 months – Investigation

Findings have shown that within eight months, specifically from March to October, this year, about 16 million call and data subscribers left the services of MTN, 9Mobile and Airtel telecommunication providers, respectively.
The Nigerian Communication Ccommission’s quarterly subscriber operators’ data, obtained by The Point, revealed that among the four major telecommunication companies in the country, MTN was the worst hit as many of its subscribers abandoned the services of the firm between Q1, 2017 and Q3, 2017.
Its subscribers’ base dropped from 60.3 million as at March 2017 to 50.3 million by end, Q3 2017, which means 10 million lines were abandoned within the
period.
9Mobile also lost over two million subscribers within the period under review, when its subscriber’s base dropped from 19.6 million to 17.2 million.
As revealed in the data, about 3.5 million telecom subscribers in Nigeria similarly abandoned the services of telecommunication firms, Airtel Nigeria and MTN Nigeria between May 2017 and October 2017.
This, investigations showed, was as a result of alleged poor quality services, and high cost of data, among others.
The NCC data further revealed that about 2.5 million of the affected subscribers moved from Airtel Nigeria to other (Internet) service providers as they lamented difficulties surfing the Internet or making voice calls, over the last months under review.
Also, findings revealed that another 1.5 million subscribers moved from MTN Nigeria to other networks within the same period review.
However, stakeholders have blamed the situation on the high cost of data, current poor infrastructure, especially poor power supply, and challenges of inadequate network capacity faced by service providers in the country.
The Vice-President, Nigeria Internet Registration Association, Mr. Muhammed Rudman, said, “The cost of Internet is really expensive in Nigeria, because we have to find a way of reaching the content. When you talk of Internet, you are talking of two kinds of networks – highball network and content network. Highball networks are the ones subscribers get from providers such as MTN, Airtel, Glo and Etisalat, among others. The people who use that network browse for information and that information is with content providers and those content providers are Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter,
among others.
“But because most of them are not in Nigeria, the people browsing will have to find a way to reach that content. The farther the content is away from the user, the more expensive it is. For example, Nigeria is importing rice, which is why it is expensive. Ordinarily, in countries that produce it, it is cheaper. So, what we are doing at Exchange Point is that we are trying to bring more content into Nigeria and by doing that, it means the cost of Internet will drop.”
The President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, Mr. Lanre Ajayi, said, “While the operator’s expenses show 80 per cent for power generation in Nigeria, it is mere five per cent in Malawi, where power from the grid is stable. There is a problem of inadequate network capacity, both in terms of number of base stations, network switching capacity and transmission network capacity.
“On the issue of transmission capacity, there is low availability of fibre backbone linking various parts of the country, coupled with the slow pace of deployment of high capacity microwave backbone links. It is believed that more investment would be made towards network expansion when the operating environment becomes
friendlier.”