One of Africa’s largest economy, if not the largest (an ongoing debate with South Africa), Nigeria’s VoIP sector has seen in increase of subscription over a period of 12 months.
With 93% of growth on one year, VoIP went from 46,348 users in May 2017 to reaching 89,447 in April 2018. Out of the two main operators in that segment, Smile Communications is in charge of 93% of the market with 83,445 accounts against 6,032 for its smaller rival, Ntel network.
Still, the VoIP technology is a very narrow market on a GSM-dominated market. So far VoIP represents 0.06% of communications when GSM accounts for 99.7%. This is mainly due to a lack of broadband penetration into the country’s infrastructure. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) assured that it expect to increase broadband penetration to 30%, compared to 22% right now, by putting on policies to achieve this goal.
Prof. Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, stated “This commitment will help us to accelerate the attainment of our targeted 30 percent broadband penetration by the end of 2018. So far, broadband penetration in the country stands at 22 per cent penetration index.”
