Nigeria’s telecom sector ends 2024 on a high with 165M active telephone lines

THE GUARDIAN 

Nigeria ended the year 2024 with 164.9 million active telecommunications subscribers. This is according to December 2024 subscription statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Though the figure was 224.7 million in December 2023, the NIN-SIM audit helped to filter the system and by September 2024, NCC puts the figure at 154 million.

NCC explained that every active mobile telephone number in the country could now be identified after the cleaning brought about the NIN-SIM exercise. It can also be deduced that from October to December 2024, telecoms operators activated and reactivated about 10 million lines. In October 2024, the figure was 157.6 million, it moved to 159.8 million in November and by the end of the year, it was 164.9 million.

The country’s teledensity grew from 71.4 per cent in September, after the audit to 76 per cent by year end. Teledensity is a measurement of the number of telephones in a specific area compared to the number of people living there. It’s often used to compare access to communication services between different areas or countries.