(L-R) Mr. Foluso Phillips, chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit's public lecture on Leadership and Followership as Shared Responsibility and Professor Wole Soyinka, guest speaker, at the occasion.

MTN Nigeria’s dominant position in the country’s telecommunications market has significantly been eroded in the last one year due to stiff competition among the top three GSM and over 11 CDMA operators in the country, BusinessWorld can now reveal. Consequently, Nigeria’s telecoms market may be reaching a degree of balanced competition among the top three operators  namely MTN, Zain and Globacom. This revelation was contained in a latest research document by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on the state of the telecom industry in the country released over the weekend.
The NCC said that MTN’s share of the Nigerian mobile telephony market was 41.2 per cent as of June, 2009. And according to the standard set in Section 21 of its regulation, by achieving a market share threshold above 40
per cent, “The commission shall presume MTN to be a dominant operator in this market, but this presumption may be rebutted by other factors” the report said. “In this regard, a notable factor is that MTN’s market share has
decreased in recent years as it was greater than 50 per cent in 2006.
The report also revealed that MTN is significantly larger than its two main competitors, Zain and Globacom. MTN’s financial statements showed a level of fixed assets that was nearly twice that of Zain and almost three times as great as Globacom. “At the same time, MTN employed about the same number, or even fewer, personnel than each of the other two major carriers, strongly suggesting that it achieved significant economies of scale in its operations,” the report said.
Despite holding a market share slightly above 40 per cent, the report said various factors, including the fact that MTN’s market share has been declining, suggests that competitive forces have been effectively working to check MTN’s market power. “The measures that the Commission has previously taken to enhance competition have apparently succeeded in overcoming any potential market dominance by MTN,” the report said.
The NCC also noted that there were some significant indications which could suggest collective dominance and tacit collusion may exist among the big three, with the effect of constraining competitive price reductions and diminishing overall industry quality of service.
According to the report, Nitel retains sizable shares of related telecommunications markets, especially through its SAT-3 international internet connectivity (IIC).
However, the NCC noted that Globacom, through its fully owned GLO-1 cable, could quickly take a significant market share in the IIC market from Nitel. The market share that Globacom could take may be greater than envisaged at the inception of the GLO-1 project, given Nitel’s current operational difficulties and privatization distractions.