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Airtel Nigeria records $344 million revenue loss on data sales
By Ralph Tathagata
Airtel Nigeria, a leading telecom operator in the country, has reported a significant decline in data revenue to the sum of $344 million. The recorded fall for the nine months ending December 31, 2024, marked a sharp shortfall from $539 million, recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Stating this in its latest financial report, Airtel demonstrated that, despite a 37.2% surge in data usage per customer, rising to 8.4 gigabytes per month from 6.2GB, the company struggled to convert the increased demand into higher revenue.
Also recording an increase in the number of data customers, the report stated, “Data revenue surged by 44.3% in constant currency, driven by solid growth in both the number of data customers and ARPU, which grew by 8.2% and 31.4%, respectively.”
Across the board, businesses from different sectors of the economy have been grappling with revenue losses, and telecom operators are not immune to the harsh realities.
Telcos have attributed their losses to prolonged price stagnation while also projecting $11.3bn revenue shortfall between 2022 and 2026. They basically cited escalating operational costs, depreciation of the naira and volatile foreign exchange market as forces beyond their control.
It would be recalled that Airtel recently introduced a tariff hike, following the Nigerian Communications Commission’s approval of a 50% industry-wide tariff adjustment.
Whether the tariff adjustment will stimulate revenue recovery in the coming months for the company is yet to be seen.
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