In the latter few months of 2023, internet service providers’ (ISPs’) market penetration increased. According to checks conducted by The Guardian, there were 193,199 active customers overall for 126 ISPs whose data was provided to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in June 2023. However, by November, that number had increased to 213,876 as operators saw 20,677 additional users.
With 2,364 points of presence around the nation, these operators served 35,973 customers of wired internet and 177,903 users of wireless internet.
While wired networks use cables to link devices, like laptops or desktop computers, to the Internet or another network, wireless networks, like WiFi, use wires to connect to the Internet.
Even with the current challenges, the ISPs have long had a struggle to survive, mainly at the hands of the mobile network operators (MNOs), which control a significant portion of the nation’s Internet users.
According to the NCC, MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile collectively boast 161, 476, 682 Internet subscribers as of the time under review.
The core ISPs, which are primarily indigenous businesses, are licensed to provide solely Internet service. While mobile operators may potentially be considered ISPs since they offer Internet service in addition to phone and other services allowed by their Universal Access Service License (UASL), they are not.
With 41.8 percent penetration and 90.7 million customers, broadband penetration also increased significantly in the month under review. Leading ISPs include Spectranet, which has 646 PoPs and 113,747 clients, and Tizeti, which has 139 PoPs and 19,126 users, according to NCC figures.
IPnx has 14,871 users with 53 PoPs; Elon Musk’s Starlink has one PoP and serves 11,207 people at the moment; VDT has 58 PoPs and serves 6,611 users.
Abiodun Omoniyi, the CEO of VDT Communications Limited, emphasized the importance of ISPs in the nation’s pursuit of ubiquitous broadband in an interview with The Guardian. He also recently urged the government to support the company.
He claims that ISPs that fall into the category of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the telecom industry are becoming extinct daily.
“Indigenous ISPs are disappearing; only a small number of the more than 200 that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has licensed so far are still in operation. Since they are mostly SMEs, they require assistance to thrive,” he stated.
Omoniyi continued, saying that in order for the National Broadband Plan 2020–2025 to be implemented successfully, all stakeholders must contribute. As a result, ISPs, who are crucial to getting services to the last mile, must be encouraged. In order to address the issues facing the ISPs, Omoniyi claims that the regulator of the telecom sector must comprehend the mitigating circumstances.
“What is impeding the growth of these Internet service providers? Does it have funding? The environment in which it operates? Does regulation exist in and of itself? If it is regulation, then the regulator has jurisdiction over it.”
“It’s likely that the regulation benefits the larger ones. In other words, the regulation need to be aimed at supporting the smaller ISPs. For example, is it possible to increase competition by requiring the smaller ISPs to have at least 5% of the market share?”
Similarly, last November saw a decline in data consumption. Investigations revealed that Nigerians used 655,879 terabytes of data in August, but that figure fell to 653,257 terabytes in September. October had a spike in consumption to 675,250 terabytes, which sharply decreased to 645,407 terabytes the following month.
Data consumption and revenue growth in Nigeria are being propelled by the growing number of smartphones in the country, as stated by Karl Toriola, the CEO of MTN Nigeria.
According to Toriola, MTN’s primary source of revenue will come from data as the revenue trend has been trending in that manner.
“While data has been contributing more to overall income, voice has been contributing less. We shall so witness their convergence. We anticipate that soon voice will be surpassed by data. Voice input was seventy percent as of April 2017, however it is now less. Data will exceed voice in terms of revenue contribution during the next 18 to 36 months, driven by factors such as increased smartphone penetration and 5G adoption,” he said.
