Nigeria - Mobile Market - Overview, Statistics and Forecasts

Synopsis

Nigeria has overtaken South Africa to become the continent’s largest mobile market with now over 90 million subscribers, and yet market penetration stands at only around 60% in early 2012. Subscriber growth had slowed significantly during the global economic crisis, re-accelerated in 2010 but then slowed again in 2011. Much of the remaining addressable market is in the country’s rural areas where network rollouts and operations are expensive. This in combination with declining ARPU levels is forcing the networks to streamline their operations and to develop new revenue streams from services such as third generation (3G) mobile broadband, mobile payments/banking, and others. At the same time the operators are rolling out national fibre backbone networks to support the ever increasing demand for bandwidth. At least two operators are rolling out fourth generation (4G) LTE networks.

How difficult it is to succeed in Nigeria's highly competitive mobile market became evident with the spectacular failure of Multi-Links in 2011 in which seasoned heavyweight Telkom South Africa lost almost its entire investment.

This report contains a market overview and analysis, key statistics, regulatory issues, profiles of major players, including financial results where available, and two scenario forecasts for the mobile market in 2013 and 2016.

Companies covered in this report:

• MTN Nigeria;
• Glo Mobile (Globacom);
• Bharti Airtel (formerly Zain, Celtel);
• Visafone;
• EMTS (Mubadala, Etisalat);
• M-Tel (Nitel);
• Multi-Links (Telkom SA);
• Starcomms;
• Reliance;
• Intercellular;
• Zoda Fones.

Table of Contents

• 1. Synopsis
• 2. Overview of Nigeria’s mobile market
  • 2.1 Mobile statistics
• 3. Regulatory issues
  • 3.1 GSM licence terms
  • 3.2 Interconnection
  • 3.3 Mobile tariffs
    • 3.3.1 Per-second billing (PSB)
  • 3.4 International gateways
  • 3.5 Unified licensing regime brings new competition
  • 3.6 Universal service
  • 3.7 Mobile number portability
  • 3.8 Central equipment identity register
  • 3.9 Poor quality of service
  • 3.10 Registration of subscriber details
  • 3.11 Foreign ownership
• 4. Major mobile operators
  • 4.1 MTN Nigeria
    • 4.1.1 Financial results 2009, 2010
    • 4.1.2 Network infrastructure and coverage, capital expenditure (capex)
    • 4.1.3 National backbone network
    • 4.1.4 Services
    • 4.1.5 Average revenue per user (ARPU)
    • 4.1.6 Major acquisitions
  • 4.2 Bharti Airtel (formerly Zain/Celtel Nigeria)
    • 4.2.1 Financial results 2009
    • 4.2.2 Network infrastructure and coverage
    • 4.2.3 National backbone network
    • 4.2.4 Services
    • 4.2.5 ARPU
  • 4.3 Globacom
    • 4.3.1 Network infrastructure and coverage
    • 4.3.2 Fibre optic backbone network
    • 4.3.3 Services
  • 4.4 M-Tel
  • 4.5 Unified service licensees
    • 4.5.1 Multi-Links Telkom
    • 4.5.2 Reliance Telecommunications Ltd (Reltel, Zoom)
    • 4.5.3 Starcomms Ltd
    • 4.5.4 Intercellular Nigeria Ltd
    • 4.5.5 Visafone
    • 4.5.6 EMTS (Mubadala, Etisalat)
• 5. Mobile data services
  • 5.1 SMS
    • 5.1.1 Premium-rate SMS, interactive TV (iTV)
  • 5.2 MMS
  • 5.3 GPRS, EDGE
  • 5.4 WAP
  • 5.5 CDMA2000 1x
  • 5.6 BlackBerry
  • 5.7 Mobile money transfer, m-banking
• 6. Mobile TV
• 7. 3G
  • 7.1 Licensing
  • 7.2 Globacom
  • 7.3 Zain
  • 7.4 MTN
  • 7.5 CDMA EV-DO
• 8. LTE
• 9. Satellite mobile
• 10. Forecasts – mobile subscribers – 2013; 2016
  • 10.1 Notes on scenario forecasts
• 11. Related reports

• Table 1 – Mobile subscribers and penetration rate – 1998 - 2012
• Table 2 – Mobile subscribers by operator, technology – June 2011
• Table 3 – MTN Nigeria ARPU – 2002 - 2011
• Table 4 – Zain Nigeria ARPU – 2006 - 2009
• Table 5 – Starcomms total and mobility/mobile subscribers – 2005 - 2011
• Table 6 – Forecast mobile subscribers – 2013; 2016

• Chart 1 – Mobile subscribers and penetration rate – 2002 - 2012

• Exhibit 1 – Ownership battle – from EWN to Vee Networks to V-Mobile to Celtel/Zain to Bharti