Recall that earlier last year, the federal government of Nigeria directed all telecommunications companies in the country to strictly enforce a policy to have their subscribers link their SIMs to their NIN.
Due to this directive from the FG, telecommunications operator, Airtel Nigeria, recently disclosed that the company lost a whopping N14.1 billion ($34 million) revenue between April and June this year 2022, due to the failure of some of its subscribers to link their NIN with their SIMs.
While disclosing it in its quarterly result for the period of June, Airtel revealed that a total of 13.6 million of its customers were initially barred out of which 5.3 million (39 percent) have subsequently submitted their NIN and 2.3 million (17 percent) have subsequently been verified and unbarred.
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See what the company said,
“Following a directive issued by the Nigerian communication commission (NCC) on December 7, 2020, to all Nigerian telecom operators, Airtel Nigeria has been working with the government to ensure that all our subscribers provide their valid National Identification Number (NC) to update SIM registration records. To complete the registration process, we must link the NIN information received with the SIM of the respective subscribers and share the same with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)”.
It might interest you to know that despite all these shortcomings aforementioned, the telecommunications company was able to weather the storm, as the firm total revenue for mobile services and mobile money services combined, grew in Nigeria by 18.3 percent, in East Africa by 14.1 percent, and in Francophone Africa by 11.7 percent.
Meanwhile, Airtel Nigeria raked N87.2 billion ($210 million) from data service alone between April 2021 and June 2022. This was a result of the continuous increase in the use of data by its subscribers.
Airtel revealed that voice revenue was still the highest for the operator accounting for 50% of earnings, data inched closer with 41% contribution. In a financial report, Airtel revealed that its revenue grew by 16.2% in reported currency to $517 million, and by 18.3% in constant currency.
The difference in the growth rates was due to the devaluation of the Naira by 1.8%. Its data revenue grew by 24.8% in constant currency, driven by data customer base growth of 15.6% and data average revenue per use (ARPU) growth of 7.1%.
Due to the significant increase in the revenue of Airtel Nigeria, this earned them a spot in the list of most valuable companies in Nigeria, sitting in the first position as of June 2022.
The company’s market valuation grew to N6.51 trillion having recorded stellar growth in its share price in the first half of the year. The market value of Airtel rallied by 81.3% in the six month period, representing a capitalization gain of N2.92 trillion from N3.59 trillion recorded as of December 2021.
Looking at these significant increases in the revenue of telecommunication companies in the country, there is no disputing the fact that Nigerians have been consuming a lot of data lately, as the high consumption is reflected in the financial reports of telecommunication companies in the country.