More Nigerians go online
By Segun Oruame
You want to browse for free in Nigeria? Try Opera Mini. In less than
three minutes of your phone being configured to have the necessary
application downloads, you are online, browsing for free in
Nigeria’s fast growing mobile Internet market. But free net
downloads from Opera Mini, a web browser designed primarily for
mobile phones, is not the reason for Nigeria’s fast rising Internet
uptake. It is the mobile Internet services from the army of GSM and
CDMA networks in the country’s telecom sector of some 75 million
phone subscribers.
There were 200,000 Internet users as at 2000 to a population of
142,895,600 representing 0.1 % penetration according to Internet
Usage Statistics by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
However, by 2009, growth has escalated positively to 7.4% of the
population with Internet users rising to 11,000,000 as at June at
2009. Census estimate for 2009 according to the Census Bureau was
149,229,090.
Internet usage has been largely driven by the fast uptakes of mobile
telephony and fixed-wireless services notably CDMA networks.
Internet diffusion has followed the rapid uptake of mobile phones
which networks have leveraged on to provide Internet access as
additional revenue stream. Quite remarkable is that Internet access
grew to 5,000,000 or 3.1 % of the existing population as at 2006,
five years after GSM services were first launched and less than
three years after mobile Internet went commercial on GSM networks.
As is the rest of Africa, Internet penetration has been slowed down
by the high cost of access. Before the commercial entry of mobile
Internet, Internet access largely depended on the costly acquisition
of PC and premium subscription to one of the licensed Internet
service providers. In a country with high population of low income
earners, subscription was limited to only a small number of people
and in few cities.
But with mobile Internet at less than N7000 ($50), subscription rose
dramatically to make Nigeria one of the biggest mobile Internet
market on the continent. Mobile Internet has expanded in several
African countries to extend reach for an otherwise under-covered
large section of the population in major cities with a large pool of
commercial activities or cities with large number of educational
institutions.
As one recent report indicates, the dynamics for Internet
penetration are changing helped by increasing competition and newer
technologies “able to deliver wireless broadband access. More than
400 ISPs have been licensed as well as a number of data carriers,
Internet exchange and gateway operators. Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) is already carrying the bulk of Nigeria’s
international voice traffic. The current deployment of the country’s
first Next Generation Networks (NGN) will drive further convergence
of voice, data and video/TV, enabling the provision of triple-play
services that will ultimately also involve the country’s already
competitive broadcasting sector.”
Virtually all mobile operators offer mobile Internet services
helping to fuel their popularity and usage. The result has been a
greater presence of Nigerians online and an increasing popularity of
local and international sites. Newspapers sites are the most visited
while those of e-payment sites are the least visited to give a
cursory picture of how the various industries are performing online.
[See graph in ‘Tapping the Nigerian Internet market goldmine’]
Spread in Internet shares similar traits with several African
countries such as Ghana and Kenyan as observed by a report on the
mobile Internet in Kenya. “Cell phone internet subscribers make up a
majority of the mobile data category which also includes access to
internet through computers using the plug and play modems.”
Operators are bound to gain. It is an additional revenue stream that
could see voice playing less significant role in their revenue
portfolio as the need for data and web access increases overtime.
“Access to the internet through cell phones is set to emerge as a
significant revenue opportunity for mobile operators, analysts say,
adding that consumers are also benefiting immensely from the
convenience of portable internet.
“According to Opera, a software company that studies trends in
mobile browsing, Opera Mini alone -- controlling 30 per cent of the
global mobile browser software -- mobile internet users generate
more than $4 billion per year for operators globally, using an
average pricing of $1 per megabyte.
"When people browse more, it is a win-win situation as operators
receive more revenue, users have more incentive to upgrade their
data plans, and people get the Web pages they want in an efficient
and affordable manner," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO Opera Software.
Nigeria Telecoms Market Statistics and Forecasts
Nigeria is one of the biggest and fastest growing telecom markets in
Africa with still huge further growth potential in all sectors. It
is expected that the recently privatised incumbent, Nitel, will
compete more aggressively and effectively in the future, and that a
new unified licensing regime introduced in 2006, allowing all
operators to provide both fixed and mobile services, will accelerate
market growth going forward. Both fixed and mobile service providers
will benefit from the increasing demand for Internet access and
broadband capabilities. This report contains key statistics and
scenario forecasts for the country’s fixed-line, mobile and Internet
markets for the years 2010 and 2015.
Source: Alireta Nigeria Limited (www.alireta.com)
Internet Usage and Population Growth:
YEAR Users Population % Pen. Usage Source
2000 200,000 142,895,600 0.1 % ITU
2006 5,000,000 159,404,137 3.1 % ITU
2009 11,000,000 149,229,090 7.4 % ITU
Opera Mini is a web browser designed primarily for mobile phones,
but also for smartphones and personal digital assistants. It uses
the Java ME platform and consequently requires that the mobile
device be capable of running Java ME applications. Opera Mini is
offered free of charge, supported through a partnership between its
developer, the Opera Software company, and the search engine company
Google. Opera Mini was derived from the Opera web browser for
personal computers, which has been publicly available since 1996.
Opera Mini began as a pilot project in 2005. After limited releases
in Europe, it was officially launched worldwide on January 24, 2006.
Opera Mini requests web pages through the Opera Software company's
servers, which process and compress them before relaying the pages
back to the mobile phone. This compression process makes transfer
time about two to three times faster, and the pre-processing smooths
compatibility with web pages not designed for mobile phones.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
