Glo Mobile, the newest entrant to the mobile telephony market, has taken about two percent of the market share, 30-days after launching its services in the country.
According to the National Communication Authority (NCA), the Nigerian-owned mobile network operator signed on a little over 468,000 customers in the month of May, which is about 284 per cent less the 1.8 million customers who reportedly reserved their numbers on the network before it launched.
Nonetheless, Glo�s performance is impressive enough to make it the first mobile network provider in the country to sign on close to half a million customers within the first month of operation.
Glo has also now become the fifth biggest network operator in the county surpassing Expresso, which has been in the business for years.
Expresso still controls one percent of the mobile telephony market despite dropping subscriber numbers from about 202,000 at the end of the first quarter this year to close at a little above 195,000 at the end of May.
MTN, which has over the years led the mobile network market also had a marginal decrease in its subscriber base but maintained its position as the market leader with a subscriber base of above 10.6 million representing 47 per cent of the total market share.
Vodafone�s subscriber base of more than 4.67 million represents 21 per cent of the total market share as Tigo had a marginal decrease in its subscriber base, to close at 3.45 million representing 15% of the market.
Meanwhile, Airtel�s increased its subscriber base to 3 million representing 14 per cent of the total market share.
Currently, there are six mobile operators in the country who are all competing for significant market share in a market of about 25 million people.
According to the national telecom regulator, the total share of the mobile telephone market now stands at 22.4 million. However, growth in mobile phone subscription numbers does not tell the whole story in the telecom industry since they do not capture mobile phone usage, as there will almost certainly be considerably more users than mobile subscribers.
While the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has used mobile phone subscription as a standardized measure of mobile phone access and penetration in a country, the numbers can be deceptive to operators since the culture of most Ghanaian communities encourages sharing, which means mobile phones are often divided among people. So the actual number of users is likely to be much higher than the nearly 80 per cent mobile phone penetration rate of the country.
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