In compliance with the Nigerian Communications Commission’s (NCC) directive about SIM cards not associated with the National Identity Number (NIN) of the users, MTN Nigeria claims to have completely blocked 8.6 million lines from the network.
The business revealed this in its first quarter (Q1) 2024 financial report, stating that it had an effect on the quarter’s operations.
However, MTN revealed that the NCC has extended the deadline from April 15 to July 31, 2024, to provide users with fewer than five lines connected to an unconfirmed NIN additional time to finish the required verification exercise.
MTN claims that users with more than five lines connected to an unverified NIN and users who failed to submit their NIN are the ones whose lines have been completely banned.
In compliance with the Nigerian Communications Commission’s (NCC) directive about SIM cards not associated with the National Identity Number (NIN) of the users, MTN Nigeria claims to have completely blocked 8.6 million lines from the network.
The business revealed this in its first quarter (Q1) 2024 financial report, stating that it had an effect on the quarter’s operations.
However, MTN revealed that the NCC has extended the deadline from April 15 to July 31, 2024, to provide users with fewer than five lines connected to an unconfirmed NIN additional time to finish the required verification exercise.
MTN claims that users with more than five lines connected to an unverified NIN and users who failed to submit their NIN are the ones whose lines have been completely banned.
Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria, emphasized the following effects of the regulatory directive and the NIN-SIM linking exercise:
“During the quarter, we also kept an eye on how the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s industry-wide NIN-SIM directive—which forbids subscriber lines not connected to their National Identity Number (NIN)—was affecting our company.
“In Q1 2024, this had an effect on the growth of our user base in all of our major business divisions (voice, data, and fintech).
“We minimized the net effect of the barred subscribers, and our total number of subscribers decreased by 2 million in Q1, closing with a total of 77.7 million subscribers, even though we had to fully bar 8.6 million subscribers in accordance with the directive.”
According to Toriola, this proved the worth of the business’s customer value management (CVM) programs, which aided in churn reduction, customer retention, and the growth of gross connections.
In the meantime, the business revealed a drop in data subscribers during the examined quarter. The CEO of MTN stated that the number of active data subscribers decreased somewhat, from 44.5 million to about 78,000.
“Despite these challenges, we saw a rise in activity within the base, with a 5.1% increase in voice traffic and a 40.6% increase in data traffic.
According to Toriola, “this is a result of the steady growth in demand for voice and data, supported by our customer-friendly offers and ongoing investment in network quality and coverage.”
The total number of active mobile subscriptions in Nigeria across the networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile fell to 219 million as of March 2024 from 224.4 million in December 2023, according to data from the NCC. This decline was caused by the adoption of the mandatory NIN-SIM linkage policy by all telecom operators.