As WhatsApp Improves, Nigerian Telcos Drop 10M Subscribers
There is one correlation that Nigerian telcos should work hard to avoid: WhatsApp calls having better quality than direct calls. In other words, if making a call via WhatsApp becomes better than calling a person’s direct phone line, the industry would have challenges.
During peak times in Kaduna, sometimes you struggle to place calls to Lagos. But at the same time, WhatsApp calls go through. The implication is that you just forget the number-based calls and focus on WhatsApp. That is revenue lost for the telcos.
What am I driving to? If WhatsApp calls improve, I do not need to have two sim cards because the original intents for two sims is purely to manage the quality issues of networks. I use Tecno in Nigeria which makes using two sims easier, but recently, I have noticed that having WhatsApp has provided an extra option when direct calls do not go through. One sim card is now largely redundant.
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Others could be experiencing this: the telecommunications industry lost 10 million Nigerian customers in 2017. Most of them saw that one sim and WhatsApp could do. Yes, no need for multiple sims.
Nigeria’s $70 billion telecommunications industry ended year 2017 with 145 million active subscribers, after losing 10 million customers within the period. Subscriber statistics released yesterday by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which confirmed this, also showed that the teledensity crashed, losing seven per cent. […]
The NCC statistics showed that MTN still controlled the market and finished the year with 36. 2 per cent market share and 51.4million subscribers. It is followed by Globacom with 37 million subscribers and 26.4 per cent market share. Airtel now controlled 25. 3 per cent of the market with 35.9 million subscribers. 9mobile has 12.03 per cent market share with 17 million subscribers.
Of course, WhatsApp message is light years ahead of SMS which costs more and never keeps records. That also drives more people to use WhatsApp.
NB: I must add that recession could also be (partly) blamed for the loss of 10 million subscribers.
Ndubuisi Ekekwe, the Nigerian telcos have been hit by three factors since 2011: 1) number porting or flight to quality and price (2011), 2) flight to data (2015), and 3) NCC's pro-market OTT position (2017).
The first factor, number porting, empowered the Nigerian. In 2008, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe and I had a conversation at Stanford University about giving ownership of the number back to the consumer to impact pricing and data freedom. He said he was working on it but didn't get it all passed until 2011, I believe. From that day on, subscribers have been able to move their number in search of quality service and appropriate price.
Beginning 2015, ITU challenged global telcos to up their data game at GSMA's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, to compete against the rising threat of OTT call, chat, and media services--read Skype, WhatsApp, Spotify, Netflix, and PublicVine. NCC responded, Nigerian telcos did not.
The final factor was the 2017 pro-market OTT position released by NCC in which NCC determined not to block OTT service providers and thus called on the Nigerian telcos to be more innovative and collaborative in order to be more competitive. Nigerian telcos have not responded.
You can draw your own conclusions.
