Thursday, 14 June 2012 00:00

A survey on the ongoing SIM card registration, which the Nigerian Communications Commission is conducting alongside the mobile network operators have showed that there are mobile telephone subscribers in Lagos than other parts of the country.

The survey, which was conducted by the Joint Action Committee on Information and Communications Technology Awareness and Development (JACITAD),revealed that registration for Lagos residents stands at 5,395,783 while the other South West States put together is 4,581,155. The North Central States is 4,105,165; South-South States (4, 070, 1560; North West States (2,140,938); North East States (1,776,657);
 South East States (761,399).

Tagged, the Nigeria SIM Card Registration Survey 2012, the survey also showed that MTN has the largest SIM card users in the country with as it registered 33,900.000 while Globacom registered 15,119,033 subscribers.
Others are: Airtel 14,172,411, Etisalat  12,750,000, Visafone 2,152,609, Starcomms 445,369 and Multi-Links 108,000.

President of JACITAD, Mr. Shina Badaru  while presenting the survey to the media in Lagos said that the survey was the result of a comprehensive interview with NCC’s senior officials in charge of the SIM registration project, analysis of the SIM registration data submitted by the NCC front-end partners, analysis registration data submitte by the MNOs to the NCC as well as analysis of the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in the project.
He disclosed the seven front-end partners, which took part in the exercise are Chams (Lagos),Data Group IT LTD (North East ),eagle/CBC Consortuim (North West States),E-kenneth/Sagemetrics (South-South), Joint Komputer Kompany(South West), Private Networks Nigeria (North Central) and SW global Ltd (south East).

According to him, the MNOs did not disclosed how much it cost to registered each of the subscribers stating that “if all the variables such a cost of mobilizing the agents, marketing communications and promotions embarked upon to incentive to subscribers to enroll their SIM before the terminal date”, it would not doubt be more expensive than what the NCC thought.
The survey further showed the wide gulf that the competition in the industry has created between the GSM and the CDMA operators.

The survey showed that while the GSM operators accoutered for 76,021,444 of the 78,647422 of the registered SIM, the CDMA had a mere total of 2,705,978.
The survey indicated that there were several cases of multiple registration of SIM card discovered during the cleaning and matching of the data submitted by the front-end partners and the MNOs, which the survey said was caused by the incentives from the MNOs.
While assessing the role corporate governance in the conduct of the exercise, the survey noted that the “NCC seems to have put in place a well-articulated and enforceable corporate governance strategy and the risk mitigation processes”.

For instance, the survey showed that initial payment of 15vper cent of contract sums to the front-end partners were predicated on submission of advance payment guaranty of equivalent value from  a reputable Nigerian bank.
In addition, subsequent payments of 20 per cent of contract sum were base on certification of deployment of facilities in not less than 50 per cent of the coverage areas by project management consultant, KPMG.