Nigeria - Key Statistics, Telecom Market and Regulatory Overviews

Synopsis

Nigeria is one of the biggest and fastest growing telecom markets in Africa, attracting huge amounts of foreign investment, and is yet standing at relatively low levels of market penetration. Far reaching liberalisation has led to hundreds of companies providing virtually all kinds of telecom and value-added services in an independently regulated market. The mobile sector, which has seen triple-digit growth rates five years in a row since competition was introduced, has been joined by a number of additional players under a unified licensing regime which has also boosted the country’s underdeveloped Internet and broadband sector. Third generation mobile and WiMAX wireless broadband services are being rolled out at a rapid pace, backed by new national and international fibre links. After failing repeatedly in the past, the privatisation of Nitel, the incumbent national telco and its mobile arm M-Tel is currently underway again.

Companies covered in this report:

• Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd (Nitel);
• Globacom.

Table of Contents

• 1. Synopsis
• 2. Key statistics
• 3. Overview of Nigeria’s telecom market
  • 3.1 Background
  • 3.2 Mobile market
  • 3.3 Fixed-line and fixed-wireless market
  • 3.4 Internet and broadband market
  • 3.5 Telecom investments
• 4. Regulatory environment
  • 4.1 Nigerian Communications Commission Decree (NCCD) 1992
  • 4.2 National Telecommunications Policy (NTP), 1995-2009
  • 4.3 Nigerian Communications Act of 2003
  • 4.4 West African common regulatory framework 2005
  • 4.5 Class Licence policy extension 2007
• 5. Regulatory authority
  • 5.1 Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)
    • 5.1.1 NCC Challenges and Direction
• 6. Key regulatory issues
  • 6.1 Interconnection
  • 6.2 Consumer protection, quality of service
  • 6.3 Environmental impact of telecom towers
  • 6.4 Infrastructure sharing
  • 6.5 No regulation on state level
  • 6.6 Universal service
    • 6.6.1 National Rural Telephony Program (NRTP)
    • 6.6.2 National Information Technology Development (NITD) Fund
  • 6.7 National emergency numbers
• 7. Telecom sector liberalisation
  • 7.1 Globacom’s SNO licence
  • 7.2 Regional fixed-wireless access (FWA) licences
  • 7.3 International gateway licences
  • 7.4 Unified licensing regime since 2006
• 8. The five attempts to privatise Nitel
  • 8.1 IPO
• 9. Spectrum auctions
  • 9.1 3.5GHz
  • 9.2 800MHz
  • 9.3 450MHz
  • 9.4 3G mobile spectrum
  • 9.5 LTE/WiMAX spectrum
• 10. Related reports

• Table 1 – Country statistics – 2012
• Table 2 – Fixed-line network statistics – 2012
• Table 3 – Internet provider statistics – 2012
• Table 4 – Internet user statistics – 2012
• Table 5 – Mobile statistics – 2012
• Table 6 – National telecommunications authority
• Table 7 – Financial bids for Nitel/M-Tel, first and second round – 2010

• Chart 1 – Financial bids for Nitel/M-Tel, first and second round – 2010

• Exhibit 1 – Number of telecom licences by category – February 2012
• Exhibit 2 – Regional FWA licensees