Bharti Airtel has proudly claimed the title of the second largest telecom operator in Nigeria. This news comes less than two months after the company beat other service providers in India to crossing the 200 million mobile subscriber base. What’s more, Airtel also has a seat amongst the top 5 mobile network operators in the world.
The news about it being the second largest telecom brand in the aforementioned West African country comes from official industry data released by the NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission). The market share of mobile operators for February 2014 shows Airtel to have 26,194,336 customers in the region. That’s 21 percent of the total share.
In first place is MTN which has a lion’s share of 57,183,745 subscribers and hence claims 45 percent of the market. Trailing close on the heels of Airtel Nigeria is Globacom with 21 percent of the pie and a user base of 24,490,650 people. The other two names that have been highlighted by the NCC include Etisalat and MTel with 18,119,397 and 258,520 customers, respectively.
In the past two and a half years, Airtel has apparently invested $1.2bn dollars in Nigeria with the aim of expanding and fortifying network capacity and quality in the country. It offers 3.75G services in 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja. The company has also tested LTE (Long Term Evolution) in Lagos and rolled out High Definition Voice Service.
Bharti Airtel currently operates in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Apart from delivering 2G, 3G and 4G, the brand also dabbles in rendering fixed line, high speed broadband through DSL,IPTV and DTH as well as other enterprise services.