Telecommunications operator, MTN has said it rolled out 11,534 network sites across the country.

MTN in its audited financial report for year ended December 31, 2023, said its depreciation and amortization increased by 27.6 per cent, mainly due to increased site roll out and the spectrum licenses acquired.

Specifically, MTN said it rolled out 9,589 4G sites and 1,945 5G sites that cover all the states in the country and acquired an additional 2600 MHz spectrum supporting the growth of data.

Already, data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) showed that 5G subscriptions in the country increased to 2.3 million in December 2023.

NCC puts 5G penetrations at 1.04 per cent, which equals 2.3 million of the 224.7 million active telephone users in the country as of December 2023. Three mobile network operators, MTN, Airtel, and Mafab Communications have rolled out 5G in Nigeria.

However, the telecoms regulator said most telephone connections in Nigeria were still on 2G as of last year. The industry data shows that 2G accounted for 57.84 per cent of all connections in Nigeria at the end of the year. 3G subscriptionswere 9.80 per cent, while 4G had 25.06 per cent connections.

MEANWHILE, MTN disclosed that following the December 2023 directive of the NCC for telecoms operators to disconnect unlinked SIMs to NIN; it discovered that 19 million SIMS on its network needed verifications.

It said by February 28, 2024 deadline, it had verified 4.3 million. In the financial report the firm said: “We also had approximately 4.2 million lines disconnected for which subscribers did not submit their NIN.”

Several of these lines were low -value subscribers, minimising the revenue impact.

“We are actively engaging the authorities to accelerate the NIN verification process. We have also increased our engagement with the affected customers, providing various channels for verification to minimize service disruption.”

Commenting on the company’s performance in 2023, MTN Nigeria’s CEO, Karl Toriola, said the company maintained strong commercial momentum in its connectivity business and platforms, supported by the growth in the user base.

“We added over four million subscribers in 2023, bringing our total base to 79.7 million. We also increased our data subscribers by over five million to 44.6 million, which helped to drive total data traffic growth of 44.9 per cent.

“This reflected the sustained growth in demand for data, supported by our compelling propositions to customers and the consistent investment in the quality and coverage of our network.

“The additional 2600MHz spectrum we acquired in September 2023 also helped us to deploy additional capacity to our network more efficiently,” Toriola said.

MEANWHILE, the instability of the naira impacted the telecommunications, which resulted in a loss of about N740 billion in 2023 up from N81 billion in 2022 to foreign exchange crises in the country.

MTN said its financial result has been negatively affected by the sharp devaluation in the naira against the US dollar impacting its financials, despite the operating company’s solid underlying operational performance.

This mainly drove higher operating and net finance costs for MTN Nigeria, which are expected to affect the group’s full-year financial performance.