Business Briefs
THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has said that telecommunication operators in the country invested N471.91 billion in 2019. It said the capital investment of mobile network operators and other telecom service providers increased from N440.6 billion in 2018 to N471.91 billion in 2019.
It is 2019 subscribers’/network data report, NCC said this figure was based on the responses received from five mobile network providers and 16 other telecoms operators in the country. The report stated that the capital expenditure of five mobile network operators declined by 1.8 percent from a total investment of N316.09 billion in 2018 to N310.14 billion in 2019.
A breakdown of the report showed that MTN had the highest investment among the MNOs, reporting an investment of N197.59 billion in 2019 compared with 2018, when it invested N201.02 billion in its network. Airtel spent N74.36 billion on improving its network in 2019 as against N80.71 billion in 2018.
Globacom spent N34.23 billion on its network in 2019 as against N31.92 billion the company invested in 2018. While 9mobile invested N3.91 billion to improve its network in 2019 compared with N2.31 billion spent in 2018.
Also, Ntel invested N47 million on its network in 2019 as against N137 million in 2018. Other operators such as tower companies, value added service providers, co-location infrastructure companies and interconnect exchanges, among others, invested a total of N161.77 billion in 2019.
This figure represents 30 percent increase in investment from N124.51 billion spent by the operators in 2018. The NCC report stated that a total of 58,755 base transceiver stations and co-location towers were recorded.
The report stated that 34,033 base stations, representing 58 percent were owned by the MNOs. According to the statistics, the mobile operators added 3,396 new base stations in 2019, having reported a total of 30,637 base stations in 2018. “As at December 2019, MTN owned the highest number of base stations standing at 16,796 base stations.”
By December 2019, Airtel had deployed 8,924 BTS; Glo had a total of 7,516 base stations; Ntel owned 675 BTS; 9mobile had 120 BTS, while Smile owned two base stations.
– Oct. 9, 2020 @ 16:00 GMT /
Tags: Telcos invested N471.9bn in 2019 – NCC
