Telecommunications in Nigeria

Telephones - main lines in use: 2,469,552 (2007 est.)

Mobile Cellular phones : 43,066,679(2007 est.)

Telephones - mobile cellular: Recent deregulation of the mobile phone market has led to the introduction of Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) network providers operating on the 900/1800 MHz spectrum, MTN Nigeria [1], Zain [2], Globacom [3] and MTel [4]. Use of cell-phones have soared, and have mostly replaced the unreliable services of the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL). The current estimate lies at about 45.5 million mobile phones as at August 2007, with most people having more than one cellphone.

Nigeria's telecom regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), introduced the Unified Licencing Regime with the expiration of the exclusivity period of the main GSM network providers. It is hoped that the telcos with the unified licence would be able to provide fixed and mobile telephony, Internet access as well as any other communications service they choose to offer.

Telephone system: an inadequate system, further limited by poor maintenance; major expansion is required and a start has been made. New cellular phone introduction has fixed the communication problem to a large part.
domestic: intercity traffic is carried by coaxial cable, microwave radio relay, a domestic communications satellite system with 19 earth stations, and a coastal submarine cable; mobile cellular facilities and the Internet are available
international: satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (2 Atlantic Ocean and 1 Indian Ocean); coaxial submarine cable SAFE (South African Far East)

Radio broadcast stations: AM 83, FM 36, shortwave 11 (2001)

Radios: 23.5 million (1997)

Television broadcast stations: 116 stations (40 cable stations) (2007)

The largest broadcasting companies are the government-owned Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN)[5] and the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA)[6]. The NTA has two television services. One is NTA 1, which is distributed among NTA's six television zones. The other is NTA 2, which is distributed nationwide and is funded mostly by advertising. Nitel owns a majority of the transmitters that broadcast FRCN and NTA programming.

Each state also has a broadcasting company that broadcasts one or two locally operated terrestrial stations. This means that there are about 50 government owned, but partly independent television stations. A new player in the Nigerian television scene is a private company called Minaj Broadcast International (MBI) http://www.minajmedia.com/ . Most of their programming is aimed for the African and Caribbean TV markets, but is broadcast globally from Lagos, Abuja, Obosi and Port Harcourt centers. With several affiliate TV stations in some African countries. The African Independent Television (AIT) http://www.aittv.com/ is also a high profile satellite television station broadcasting globally from its Lagos and Abuja centers. Other direct satellite television stations with international reach operating in Nigeria are Channels Television, Murhi International Television, Silverbird Television, Galaxy TV, TV Continental etc all in Lagos.

There is general access to M-Net, a South African cable television station, broadcast over satellite. M-Net has offices in most Nigerian cities, and is watched by a large number of people.

NB: Some of this information is from the 1993 and 2005 editions of WRTH, the World Radio and Television Handbook and can change anytime.

Televisions: 6.9 million (1997)

Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 11 (2000). There is satellite access to European Satellite internet providers all over the countries. In most towns in Nigeria, there are over 6 public internet Cafes, privately owned and operated, and often connected over European internet connections.

A new dimension to internet connectivity has been introduced with hundreds of thousands of people now accessing the internet on their WAP-enabled mobile phones, smartphones and on their PCs using their phones as a modem. This is largely due to the introduction of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) connectivity by the GSM operators. All four existing GSM networks presently offer GPRS services and plans are underway for the introduction of 3G/UMTS in 2006.

VSAT has remained the best solution for remote internet access in Nigeria. One of the leading VSAT service providers is Syscomptech, they were voted the best Direct VSAT Marketers in 2008 and maintains satellites with direct footprints over Nigeria.

Internet Hosts: 1,968 (2006)

8 Million (2006)

Country code (Top level domain): .ng

See also

• Nigeria