NCC Says Nigeria Lost 12 Million Internet Users Over NIN Linkage Policy

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced that the telecommunication sector lost 12 million internet users in 2021 due to the national identity number linkage policy.

The NCC announced this via its recent report titled: “2021 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report”.

According to the NCC report, there were 141,971,560 internet users in December 2021 as opposed to 154,301,195 in December 2020, an 8% decline.

This decline occurred as a result of the Federal Government’s decision to ban SIM card sales and registration, according to the report.

Naija News recalls that the NCC gave telecom providers two weeks to deactivate SIM cards that weren’t registered with National Identity Numbers by December 2020.

The government later extended the deadline from December 2020 to January 2021 to enable subscribers with NIN to link it up; while those without NIN had till February 9, 2021.

The NCC report said subscriber number decreased from 204,601,313 subscribers in 2020 to 195,463,898 active voice subscriptions as of December 2021 “with a loss of 9,137,415 subscriptions”.

“This represents about 4.46 per cent decline in total subscription within the period under consideration,” the report added.

“The decrease in operators’ subscriber base was attributed majorly to the effect of the directive from NCC in December 2020 to all GSM operators to suspend the sale and registration of new SIMS, SIM swaps, and all porting activities.

“The objective of the audit exercise was to verify and ensure compliance by mobile network operators with the set quality standards and requirements of SIM card registration as issued by the federal ministry of communications and digital economy and the commission.”

While on the volume of data usage, the NCC said, “There was an increase in the volume of data consumed in the year-end December 2021 when compared with the year ended December 2020”.

“The total volume of data consumed by subscribers increased to 353,118.89 terabytes as of December 2021 from 209,917.40TB as of December 2020. This represents an increase of 68.2 per cent in data consumption within the period.”