By Angela Nkwocha
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in a detailed report which captures its score card for 2019 has said that telecoms contribution to GDP for the 1st Quarter and 2nd Quarter 2019, stood at 10.11 percent and 11.39 percent respectively, which contrast with 9.19 percent and 10.43 percent contribution in the 1st Quarter and 2nd Quarter of 2018 respectively, thus the general ICT contribution to GDP has increased from about 10 percent last year to 13.8% currently.
The report further reveals that active mobile voice subscribers increased from 174,012,136 to 180,386,316 while internet subscribers increased from 114,306,598 to 123,559,596.
It averred that broadband penetration increased from 32.34% (indicating 61,732,130 Nigerians on 3G and 4G networks) to 37.87% ( indicating 72,289,389 on 3G and 4G networks) stressing that 110, 500 numbers were ported between January, 2019 – October, 2019 as against 71, 723 subscribers who ported their lines between the same 10-month period in 2018.
The Commission said it received 19,841 complaints from telecoms consumers across sits various complains channels and successfully resolved 17,851, representing (90% success rate of consumer resolution), as subscriptions to DND 2442 to control unsolicited text messages increased is now at 22,356, 919.
Also stated in the report is the fact that NCC pioneered 5G trial in Nigeria, becoming the first telecoms regulator in the West Africa to proactively begin such trial toward unleashing greater digital revolution.
It also activated and increased the number of operational Emergency Commission Centre (ECC) being built by the Commission to 17 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital (FCT), Abuja – 18 ECC in all.
It noted that “in 2019, over 24 million validly-registered subscriber records were scrubbed (deduplicated) by the Commission via Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in fulfilment of the mandate to establish a credible database of telephone subscribers”.
NCC, in 2019, awarded the Value Added Services Aggregator licenses to 10 companies to provide VAS services to boost the competitiveness of the telecoms VAS segme. Also to its credit is the improvement in Quality of Service on Networks,
boost in consumer education, empowerment, intensified regulatory efforts towards protecting the interest of consumers, enlightenment programmes on e-fraud, and advanced broadband penetration to underserved areas.
