Again, Glo Emerges Largest Network in New Data Subscription

Nigeria’s next generation network, Globacom, has continued to rule the internet market as latest figures released by the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission revealed that the network has widened the gap between it and the other operators in the country in the area of new data subscriber acquisition.

A scrutiny of the latest figures released by NCC showed that it was only Globacom that recorded an increase in its internet subscriber base in the last quarter of 2015. The network had 23,285,454 internet users in October, 24,952,559 in November and 25,082,066 in December, which is an addition of 3.2m new internet subscribers in the quarter.

Conversely, MTN, Airtel and Etisalat all lost data subscribers within the period. MTN which had a total of 41,835,294 internet subscribers at the beginning of October 2015 had 39,924,737 data subscribers at the end of December, a loss of almost 2million customers.

In the same vein, Airtel which began the quarter with 17,730,955 internet customers ended with 16,835,952, a loss of nearly 900,000 subscribers.

Etisalat on its part lost 408,282 internet customers, having begun the quarter with 15,598,070 data and ended it with 15,189,788.

This is coming a few weeks after the company emerged the leader in Internet subscriber acquisition in the third quarter of last year. In that previous report on the website of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the regulator indicated that Globacom gained the highest number of internet users in September of 2015 with over a million new internet users on its network, up from 20,765,379 data users in August to 21,896,229 data users the following month.

According to the NCC data, Globacom added 1,130,850 new internet subscribers which were much more than the total number of new internet users who joined the three other major telecom operators, MTN, Airtel and Etisalat. The three recorded a combined total of 716,450 new internet subscribers in September.

In the latest report just published by NCC which showed the internet subscriptions of the four major service providers for the last quarter of 2015, Globacom has consolidated its position as the leader in new data subscriber acquisition.

The consistent growth in new internet subscriber acquisition by Globacom in the last few months is an indication of its preference by subscribers as a result of its improved internet service delivery.

The company last year invested massively to significantly upgrade its data network. The upgrade was complemented by its extensive nationwide optic fibre infrastructure linked to its Glo 1 submarine cable which connects Nigeria to Europe, America and the rest of the world.

Globacom also has several attractive and affordable internet packages which have a lot of appeal to data users. These includeFree Tomorrow, Bumper Data, Campus Booster, Twin Bash and Weekend and Night packages.

Free Tomorrow calculates all the value of airtime a subscriber uses in a day for internet services, phone calls and SMS, doubles the value and credits the subscriber’s phone by 12 midnight with the value, while Campus Booster is a special data plan that allows students and others on campus to get up to eight times more data value whenever they use their Glo lines on campuses.

In the Bumper Data Offer, subscribers get 1.5GB of data for just N1000 and 4.5GB of data for N2500. Similarly, a N3,000 data plan gives subscribers 6GB data valid for one month, while a N4000 data plan gives 9GB data plan valid for a month.

Also, Twin Bash offers subscribers the facility of recharging data directly from recharge cards in denominations ranging from N200 to N5000. A customer who recharges with N200 gets 200 MB of data worth N800 and N200 worth of airtime free for voice calls. The Twin Bash recharge, which is regarded as the best deal for voice and data in Nigeria, can be subscribed to by dialing *223*pin#. The Twin Bash offer is also available on the N500, N1000 and N5000 data recharge plans.