For years, many people have been curious about how 4G-only wireless network providers, Smile and Ntel, are faring in the Nigerian market. Usually, available public information on internet subscribers leave them out of the equation and focuses on the Big 4 only. I am happy to provide you with official data from the National Bureau of Statistics, stating in exact figures how many internet subscribers these two operators have. And it isn’t pretty.
According to the NBA report detailing active Internet subscribers numbers as at the end of Quarter 1, 2022 (that’s March ending), here are the figures for the Big 4 and the Smaller 2 (Smile and Ntel):
- MTN: 60,707,392
- Globacom: 39,568,503
- Airtel Nigeria: 39,374,465
- 9mobile: 5,552,068
- Smile: 320,892
- Ntel: 26,291
The two 4G-only providers are lagging behind so badly, it is almost unbelievable. Ntel especially hasn’t made any serious numbers at all. I am not sure what happened to scuttle Ntel’s plans to expand to more cities around the country, but it didn’t happen. And I think they have lost subscribers over the last few years. Everyone I helped subscribe to Ntel has stopped using them. And the story is pretty much the same for Smile.
I was hoping that Smile would have numbers in the range of a million subscribers by now. I wasn’t expecting anything as low as 300,000. I imagine that the absence of a voice core service for both Smile and Ntel is a factor in subscriber acquisition. But I also firmly believe that there is a huge market waiting for them to tap into. Stable, reliable Internet is still a rarity in Nigeria, and any network provider that nails it will see subscribers flock to them.
But we have seen these things happen: a provider improves their service, subscribers flock there and overload the network, service quality degrades, subscribers complain and then abandon the service. Who is going to solve this problem and provide service that has enough capacity to stay stable and reliable when subscribers flock in?
Lastly, 9mobile is still struggling to keep up with MTN, Glo and Airtel after its corporate travails and rebranding from Etisalat. That gap between it and the others in the Big 4 keeps widening. And neither Smile nor Ntel is close enough to take advantage of it.
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From 2001 when GSM phones were introduced in Nigeria till date, Mister Mobility has owned and used hundreds of mobile devices running proprietary, Java, Symbian, Palm, PocketPC/Windows Mobile, BlackBerry/BB10, webOS, Windows Phone, Firefox, Ubuntu Touch, to Android, iOS, and KaiOS operating systems.