Nigerians Lose Confidence in 9mobile, Loses 2.7m Subscribers

This seems to be bad moment for 9mobile, Nigeria’s fourth-largest telecoms service provider, as many Nigerians seem to be losing confidence in the network.

Between January and December, 2019, the fortune of the telco dipped badly as it lost about 2,743,322 subscribers.

According to recent subscriber statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the 9mobile’s share of the market dropped to 7.4%.

In January 2019, the telco had 16,385,317 subscribers and by December, the figure had dropped to 13,641,995.

Apart from the period between January and March, when 9mobile recorded a short-lived upsurge in its number of subscribers, the drop remained consistent until the end of 2019.

While MTN also recorded a dip in its subscriber figures between January and April, the network provider maintains the highest market share (37.3%), adding 2,097,256 subscribers in 2019.

At the end of 2019, the telco had 68,762,634 subscribers.

Globacom retained its position as the second-largest telecommunications network in the country adding 6,096,414 subscribers between January and December.

In December, Glo, as the telco is referred to, had 51,700,052 subscribers from 45,603,638 in January.

Airtel, the country’s third-largest telco, ended 2019 with 50,186,988 subscribers.

This is an addition of 5,216,015 from the 44,970,973 it began the year with.

Visafone, a CDMA network which has transferred its subscribers to the GSM, ended the year with 134,518 subscribers.

In total, the telecommunications sector had 184,426,187 subscribers at the end of 2019.

Further analysis of the data provided by the NCC showed that 9mobile was the biggest gainer from porting; adding 77,492 subscribers between January and December 2019.

NCC introduced porting in April 2013; allowing subscribers to move from one network provider to the other without losing their telephone numbers.

In 2019, MTN gained 23,851 subscribers though porting, Airtel added 30,026 subscribers and Globacom, 7,653 subscribers.

Reacting to the development, a cross section of Nigerians affirmed that they have dumped their 9mobile SIMs as a result of not enjoying quality services from the telco.

A former 9mobile subscriber, Abdulrahman Abdulyekeen said though MTN and 9mobile have good quality of service, but because 9mobile’s rate of call and data is too costly, he had to abandon the network.

Abdulyekeen noted; “For me, I have started using MTN for calling and browsing. So to me, MTN is the best.”

Another subscriber, who wants to be simply referred to as Lukman submitted; “When it was Etisalat, they had better service. But since the very day it turns 9Mobile, it has been scrap upon scrap… useless entity.”

To Akandu Uc; “The day I bought 9Mobile sim was the same day I threw it into a nearby gutter. I don’t like NONSENSE.”

In his own submission, Obi Onwuegbusi; “To get involved with 9Mobile is to be sucked into deals that lack transparency. You can’t recharge at weekends for either data or voice, 9Mobile will quarantine your recharge to the so-called weekend top up.

“If you fail to recharge in about three weeks, they deduct part of your refill in what they call welcome back. Their data services are the best, but they took that advantage to throttle subscribers data.

“For me, I’ve complained ad nausean to 9Mobile customer service to no avail. That they’re losing subscribers is as a result of dealing under the table, it can only go so far when people realise they are being ripped off. Good luck to them. I’ve two 9Mobile lines, one for data and the other for voice services and the complaints are across board.

Emmanuel Osegi, another former subscriber noted; “I don’t subscribe to nonsense at all. They send you unsolicited sms and charge you, you load credit of 500 they will remove 300 and acknowledge only 200. This is just the beginning for them, if they don’t pay back all they have taken from people illegally and change for better, they will soon close shop.”