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Friday, 23 October 2015

MTN Cuts Off 5.1 Million Subscribers


More than five million MTN subscribers in Nigeria were on Thursday disconnected from the network after the review of their registration documents, thereby cutting the company’s full-year forecast for subscriber numbers.

The spokesperson for the MTN Group, Nik Kershaw, said, “MTN, which operates in more than 20 countries across the Middle East and Africa, had 5.1 million subscribers cut off in Nigeria, its biggest market, at the end following checks on personal documents.

The company is also facing ongoing regulatory restrictions related to its market-leading position in Africa’s most populous country.”

Kershaw, however, said that about 3.4 million of the subscribers might have been reconnected, following steps to correct the irregularities in their registration documents.

The development, our correspondent learnt, was the fallout of the Nigerian Communications Commission’s sanction in August on telecommunications firms over improper Subscriber Identification Module registration.

The firms were asked to pay N120.4m in fines for failing to fully comply with the directive of the commission to deactivate pre-registered and defective SIM cards.

While MTN, which has over 62 million subscribers on its network, was asked to pay N102.2m; Globacom was slammed with N7.4m; Etisalat, N7m; and Airtel, N3.8m.

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