STATISTICS from the Nigerian Communications Commission has revealed an increase in Nigeria’s subscribers base, which presently stands at 94 million.

However, experts in the industry believed strongly that the actual number of subscribers would be determined when the Commission finished the collation of data in the on-going Subscribers Identification Modules exercise, which was done by both the NCC and the operators.

As such, the latest NCC’s industry statistics for October 2011 revealed that the country recorded additional 0.5 per cent subscriber base growth or 463, 680 lines month-on-month in that month.

According to the statistics, the GSM active lines stands at 88 million, Code Division Multiple Access operator has 5.2 million, while the fixed wireless operators declined from 828,797 subscribers in September 2011 to 801, 297 in October.

Furthermore, telecoms operators in the last 10 years have raised the subscriber base from its 400, 000 lines in 2011 to the current 93.9 million active subscribers representing 53.3 per cent of the total population, given the current estimate of the country’s population put at 167 by the National Population Commission.

Going by that, it shows that only 53.3 per cent of Nigerians have access to telephone services, while 73 million Nigerians representing 43.7 per cent are yet to be provided with telephony access by the operators.

This disparity is boosted by the discovery by MTN Nigeria in early 2011 that about 850 villages in the country are yet to have access to basic telephony services.

The 73 million Nigerians, who are yet to have access to telephony services resides mostly in the rural, semi-rural areas where they are either not served or are underserved by telephone operators with telecoms services.

But to experts, these 73 million underserved and unserved presents a huge market opportunity to be tapped into by the telecoms companies by channelling their infrastructure investment to the rural areas where basic telephony/voice service still remains a yearning demand by the rural dwellers.

Only recently, former Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Ernest Ndukwe reiterated the need to bridge the digital gap in the country, stressing that while the operator remains very autonomous, more investments are needed to expand telecommunications services in the country.

But to the President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu, subscriber base should be interpreted as the total number of Subscriber Identity Module in the country and not the total number of Nigerians connected.