Inactive telephone numbers increase to 76m in Nigeria– NCC

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has disclosed that the inactive telephone numbers in the country increased from 67,331,498 in June to 76,164,149 in July.

The commission made this known in its “Monthly Subscriber Data’’ report released in Lagos, adding that there were 8,832,651 unused numbers during the period, making up the total inactive lines.

The report showed that of the 226,426,215 connected lines, only 150,262,066 numbers were active, and noted that out of the 76,164,149 inactive numbers, the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) networks had a share of 72,732,130.

The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA mobile) operators had a share of 3,240,313 while the Fixed Wired/Wireless networks had a total of 184,819 unused lines.

Similarly, of the 150,262,066 active lines, the GSM networks had 149,708,077 numbers, adding a total of 528,994 lines to their June number of 149,179,083 active lines.

The report also stated that the CDMA operators had 371,613 active lines, as their active numbers reduced by 82,479 lines from the June figure of 454,092 active numbers.

The fixed/wireless networks had a share of 164,114 of the active lines, reducing their June record of 170,539 by 6,425 lines in July.

The report said that teledensity of Nigeria’s telecommunications industry also climbed to 107.33 percent in July, compared to 107.01 percent recorded in June.

Teledensity, it explained measures the percentage of a country’s population with access to telecommunications services as determined by the subscriber base, and it is currently calculated on a population of 140 million people.

The data from the report showed that some subscribers purchased SIM cards but dumped them after using them for some time.