63% of adult Nigerians use more than one phone

By Prince Osuagwu

The results of the  annual special edition of the telecoms polls released by NOIPolls Limited has revealed that most adult Nigerians who use more than one phone, actually find it inconveniencing. The choice however, according to the report, was to avoid the perennial poor quality of telecom services.

Further findings of the survey, was that a great majority of Nigerian phone users would want to see Network operators mandated to improve on their services in order to generally improve the quality of telecommunication services in Nigeria.

The survey also revealed that while about 60 percent of respondents demanded for such mandate, another 63 percent of adult mobile phone users in Nigerian were discovered to currently use two or more phone lines in order to escape bad QoS.

Although, with the report, it was not all negatives for the telecom operators as about 50 percent respondents rated the services of their network provider good while 55 percent affirmed they are getting value for money from their main network provider.

The report adduced that this 55 percent has remained constant over a two year period, but maintained that those that claim they are not getting value for money increased by 8-percent in 2013.

From statistics the survey used, the key factors that defined value for money for customers, included network/ service quality and low tariffs.

In its other top line results, only 2 percent of respondents have ported since the beginning of the Mobile Number portability drive while 26 percent do not believe the promotions of    mobile operators are real.

The Nigeria telecommunication sector has witnessed significant growth over the years and remains one of the best and fastest growing sectors of the Nigerian economy. The industry is ranked the largest and fastest growing telecom market in Africa and among the ten fastest telecommunication growth markets in the world.

As at September 2013 the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) estimated a total of 121,271,218 subscribers and a teledensity of 86.62 in Nigeria.

The industry which contributes about 8.53% to the GDP    as atMarch 2013 has recently experienced a slow growth rate and series of challenges ranging from poor quality of service to steep competition.

This implies that service providers rely heavily on price tariffs to gain market share and dominance leading to a perceived fall in the quality of service and an increasing rate of dissatisfaction amongst users.

Against this background NOIPolls said it conducted the special edition poll on the quality of telecommunication services in Nigeria to explore the mobile phone usage patterns, quality of services provide by telecommunications providers and at the end of the day, made recommendation to improve the quality of services.