[G]lobacom has sustained its lead in internet subscriptions in the telecoms market as the industry report for the first quarter of this year shows that the company strengthened its position as Nigeria’s preferred network for new data subscribers.
In a statement, the telco said in the report released by the industry regulator, covering the first three months of the year, Globacom added 1,448,354 new internet subscribers on its network during the period. The figures, as released on monthly basis, shows that for the month of January, Globacom had 354,178; for the month of February 248,593 and for March it had 845,583, bringing its total internet customers as at the end of the quarter to 26,530,420.
Globacom’s cumulative 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 per cent of the total figure of 1,820,651 new internet subscribers for the quarter.
In contrast, MTN which started 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.
A comparative analysis of the corresponding period in 2015 showed that 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