Lagos, Ogun, and Kano are the cities with the highest number of voice and internet users in Nigeria, with MTN having the highest share of subscriptions in the third quarter (Q3) of 2023.
This is contained in a recent Telecoms Data on Active Voice and Internet per State, Porting and Tariff Information report of Q3 2023 released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The report shows that Lagos State had the highest number of internet users at 19.1 million subscribers, followed by Ogun with 9.5 million subscribers and Kano State with 8.7 million subscribers.
Also, the report disclosed that Bayelsa recorded the least number of 1.1 million internet users, followed by Zamfara and Gombe with 1.8 million and 1.9 million subscribers, respectively.
Generally, there were 160 million active internet subscribers in Nigeria in Q3 2023.
The Q3 figure showed an increase of eight million internet subscribers over the 152 million subscribers recorded in the third quarter of 2022.
It showed that the figure for the third quarter of 2023 represented a 4.83 percent rise in voice subscriptions on a year-on-year basis.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the report showed growth stood at 0.42 percent.
The NBS also recorded a total of 222 million active voice subscribers in Q3 2023 compared to 212 million recorded in Q3 2022.
This represents a 4.51 percent increase in active internet subscriptions year-on-year, while on a quarter-on-quarter basis, internet subscriptions grew by 0.76 percent.
On state-by-state analysis, the report showed that Lagos State had the highest number of active telephone users in Q3 2023 at 27 million, followed by Ogun with 13 million users.
Kano State came third with 12 million telephone users.
Bayelsa had the least number of telephone users at 1.5 million subscribers, followed by Gombe and Yobe with 2.6 million users and 2.7 million users, respectively.
Meanwhile, the NBS report showed that the majority of telephone users in Nigeria in Q3 were MTN subscribers, followed by others.
