MTN, Airtel Bar 9.7 Million Subscribers

Two telecommunication companies have reported that 9.7 million of their subscribers are still barred from making outgoing calls despite submitting their National Identification Numbers for verification.

The telcos, MTN and Airtel, disclosed in their recent earnings report that 16.2 million subscribers who had their lines barred have submitted their NINs for verification but only 6.5 million had been verified as of September 30, 2022.

In April, over 72.77 million GSM lines were barred from making calls on their SIMs, following a directive from the Federal Government as regards subscribers that had not linked their SIMs and NINs.

It said the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (Retd.), “has approved the implementation of the policy with effect from April 4, 2022. Consequently, the Federal Government has directed all telcos to strictly enforce the policy on all SIMs issued (existing and new) in Nigeria.

“Outgoing calls will subsequently be barred for telephone lines that have not complied with the NIN-SIM linkage policy from April 4, 2022.”

According to MTN and Airtel 19 million and 13.6 million subscribers respectively were affected by the ban. The telcos further stated that the implementation of the policy has affected their revenue.

Airtel said, “In April 2022, the voice services for 13.6 million customers were barred due to non-submission of NIN information.

“As of September 2022, 5.7 million customers (42 per cent) have subsequently submitted their NINs and 2.7 million customers (20 per cent) have been fully verified and unbarred. Revenue growth for the first half of the year was impacted by the effect of barring outgoing voice calls in Nigeria for those customers who had not submitted their NINs. Punch