Telecom in Nigeria

Until 2001, Nigeria had a poor telecom infrastructure, hardly handling some 450,000 connected lines or a meager 0.4% penetration rate. Between 2001 and 2007, NCC, the telecom regulator, granted six GSM licenses, respectively to Celtel, MTN, MTEL, Nitel, Globalcom and EMTS. As a result, tariffs went down and the number of connected lines has jumped to 38m by July 2007, boosting teledensity to 24%. In addition four 3G licenses were granted in the country, as well as a Second National Operator (SNO) license granted to Globacom, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) licenses granted to 24 companies on regional basis, and the Unified Access Service Licenses (UASL). Nigeria has attracted about $13bn of investments in 7 years, and many forecast that Nigeria will overtake S. Africa as the largest telecom market in Africa.