New Telegraph

‘Increasing subscriptions pushing down data cost’

Nigerians may witness a further reduction in the cost of data as the operators record more subscriptions, the President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Ikechukwu Nnamani, has said.

Explaining why data price had crashed in recent times from the initial average cost of N1,000 for 1 Gigabit to less than N700 per 1GB, Nnamani attributed it to the rapid increase in the number of Nigerians subscribing for data.

According to him, since the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in March this year, there has been a surge in the number of Nigerians subscribing to data services.

“Naturally, when more people share the same infrastructure, the unit price per person drops and this explains why you are seeing a reduction in prices,” he said.
According to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the four mobile network operators – MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile – added 26.8 million internet subscriptions between January and October this year.
While internet subscriptions had been on a steady increase over the years, the number of new subscribers recorded in the  Samson Akintaro
Nigerians may witness a further reduction in the cost of data as the operators record more subscriptions, the President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Ikechukwu Nnamani, has said.

Explaining why data price had crashed in recent times from the initial average cost of N1,000 for 1 Gigabit to less than N700 per 1GB, Nnamani attributed it to the rapid increase in the number of Nigerians subscribing for data.

According to him, since the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in March this year, there has been a surge in the number of Nigerians subscribing to data services.

“Naturally, when more people share the same infrastructure, the unit price per person drops and this explains why you are seeing a reduction in prices,” he said.
According to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the four mobile network operators – MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile – added 26.8 million internet subscriptions between January and October this year.

 

While internet subscriptions had been on a steady increase over the years, the number of new subscribers recorded in the  Plan was unveiled and launched by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, on the 19th of March, 2020.

 

“One of the goals of the plan is to reduce the average cost of 1GB of data to a maximum of N390 by 2025. With the January 2020 baseline of N1,000 per GB, the maximum projected steady decrease for the end of each year was as follows: 2020 (N925), 2021 (N850), 2022 (N775), 2023 (N700), 2024 (N545), and 2025 (N390), the statement read.

 

“In line with Pantami’s commitment to under promise and over deliver, the measures have caused the current cost of data to reduce significantly beyond the December 2020 projection of N925. Based on the Report by NCC, the average cost of data as of November 2020 was N487.18, which amounts to 47.33 lower than the projected value,” the statement further read.

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