Teledensity in the Nigerian telecommunications sector in 2012 has been projected to exceed 80 percent, showing a continued growth in the country’s connection.
The investigations, carried out by the Daily Trust, revealed the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), will confirm the development when it releases the official analyses of Nigerian telecoms subscriber base for December, 2012.
Teledensity is the term used to describe the percentage of the number of mobile phone users per population at a given period of time. Worldwide, growth in teledensity is often translated to be proportional to the growth in the subscriber base.
The most recent available official figures on teledeinsity in Nigeria was 78.21 percent, while the total number of active telephone lines was almost 110 million.
The increase in teledensity experts believe is not unconnected to the increase in the number of available new telephones in November through end of December which they said surpassed 110 million with teledensity exceeding 80 per cent.
Telecoms operators, especially the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network providers such as Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat have been described as the leading major contributors to the month-on-month increase in subscriber base which has produced corresponding growth in teledensity.
Last month alone, Airtel Nigeria added a new telephone number range while another telecoms company, Etisalat Nigeria, announced its active subscribers had reached 15 million.
However, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) companies such as Visafone, Starcomms, Multi-Links and Zoom Mobile are still recording steady decline in their combined CDMA subscriber base, this has reduced their contribution to national teledensity.
