MTN, Airtel dominate Number porting, others lag behind

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NCC metrics of subscriber migration as compiled and released late last year point to the fact that MTN and Airtel enjoyed the highest number of telecoms subscribers who willingly ported out from their original service provider’s network to the new network because of their resolve to embrace better service quality.

Consequently, MTN took the lead with 3,624 new subscribers that transferred from other networks to join with MTN as of October 2024 also called, Inward porting subscribers while Airtel, 1,747 subscribers migrated towards Airtel as of October 2024.

The number of subscribers that ported into the networks as of October 2024 were as follows: Airtel – 1360, MTN- 1109, Glo – 451, 9Mobile ≈ 25, hence for inward porting, the aggregate value was 5,847.

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Therefore, the statistics meant that the total inward porting across all the networks in January 2024 stood at 3154, it increased to 3944 in February and declined to 1911 in March 2024. The total number of portings however yet again rose to 3,669 in April 2024, went up again to 4,657 in May 2024 and then fell to 3,772 in June 2024. The calculated figure of inward porting up to July 2024 for all networks was high reaching 6,361 up to August reaching 6,513 and up to September, 7,886. While the ports by the different networks used to have their highest figure in September, the total value of inward ports for the different networks slightly reduced in October 2024 to 5,847.

Also for Airtel alone, while the traffic that came into the core network through porting was 541 in January 2024, it rose to 682 in February 2024 and dipped to 343 in March 2024. Inward porting of Airtel also rose again in April 2024 to 784, but declined further in May and June 2024 to 766 and 698. The inward porting figure of Airtel re-bounced in July to 1,629, and showed an upsurge in August 2024: scored 2,287, though in September 2024 it fell slightly to 2,205 and then down again in October 2024: 1,747. Number porting therefore refers to the transfer of subscribers’ telephone numbers from the original network operator to a new network operator in the hope of getting a better service, but still using the same telephone number. While inward may be defined as the process of transferring telephone numbers from one network to another new network, outward means the transfer of telephone numbers from the current network to another new network. Portability of telephone numbers is encouraged by allowing subscribers to take their telephone numbers from one network to another in vain of better service delivery and this would not change their telephone number in the new network regardless of the networks involved. However, the porting low it has stipulated that a subscriber must stay on the new network ported to for 90 days before they can begin the porting process again.