The telecommunications industry report for the first quarter of 2016 has shown Globacom, has strengthened its position as Nigeria’s preferred network for new data subscribers. A statement from the organisation said in the report covering the first three months of the year just released by industry regulator, Globacom recorded an additional 1,448,354 new internet subscribers on its network during the period. The figure is made up of 354,178 for January, 248,593 for February and 845,583 for the month of March. Globacom’s total internet customers as at the end of the quarter stood at 26,530,420. The company’s figure of 1,448,354 for the three months under review represents 80% of the total number of 1,820,651 new customers who subscribed to internet services of the four major telecom operators in the first quarter of this year. Airtel recorded 319,229 new data subscribers for the three months, while Etisalat had an addition of 53,068 new internet users on the network during the period.
The combined figure for the two companies makes up the remaining 20% of the total figure of 1,820,651 new internet subscribers for the quarter. On the other hand, MTN which began the quarter with 39,924,737 data customers ended it with 33,356,595. This indicates a massive loss of over 6.5million internet subscribers in just three months. Compared to the corresponding period of 2015, Glo had 946,202 new internet customers, MTN recorded 1,286,205, Airtel had 2,331,160 while Etisalat had 3,994,810 new data subscribers. Since then, however, Globacom has taken firm control of the data segment of the telecom market. January 2016 statistics which showed how the major operators fared over the last12 months revealed that Glo added a total of 7,251,657 new internet users during the period.
