“100% Nigerians Now Use A Phone” – NCC

By Chris Nomjov

The Nigeria Communications Commission can confirm that Nigeria’s tele-density, also known as telephone penetration, has finally hit a 100 per cent mark, the News Agency of Nigeria reports. This data was contained in the NCC Monthly Subscriber Data, made available to NANin Lagos on Friday.

According to the information, the country’s tele-density stands at 100.59 per cent as of the end of January, with the active lines/phone numbers on the telecommunications operators’ networks reaching 140,822,483.

Tele-density measures the percentage of a country’s population with access to telephony services as determined by the active subscriber base.

“It has a direct relationship with the number of mobile subscriptions on telecom networks, and as it grows, so does the subscriber base and vice versa,” it said.

According to NCC, tele-density is calculated based on population estimate of 126 million up till December 2005 from December 2006, based on a population estimate of 140 million.

It said from December 2001 to 2006, tele-density was based on connected subscribers.

However, tele-density from December 2007 was based on active subscriptions on mobile networks.

The data showed that the industry tele-density stood at 91.40 per cent as of January 2014 and increased by 9.19 per cent to reach 100.59 per cent by January 2015.

In February 2014, it moved up to 91.40 per cent; 92.14 per cent in March and at the end of April, the figure declined to 90.78 per cent.

In May, June and July, the figures moved to 92.42 per cent, 93.70 per cent and 94.84 per cent respectively.

In August and September, telephony penetration increased to 95.20 per cent and 96.08 per cent, while it increased to 96.87 per cent in October, 97.60 per cent and then 99.32 in December 2014.

The proportional growth in tele-density showed that access to telephone services was getting deeper in this country.