The National Communications Authority (NCA) has quietly changed the huge figures it quoted as Glo data and Expresso voice subscriptions.

It has also corrected the market share figures of all the telcos as a result of the alteration in the Glo and Expresso figures.

The correction shows that Glo never got an additional 1.44 million data customers in one month and Expresso never crossed the 200,000 voice subscriber base mark as was reported previously.

News about the two telcos making a dramatic turnaround in their subscriber base went viral after the NCA posted the Mobile Cellular Voice and Data Subscriber Base figures for January 2015.

The report showed that while Glo lost about 11,500 voice subscribers, it gained whopping 1.44 million data customers, from 668,424 in December 2014 to 2,091,600 in January 2015.

Glo has since acknowledged the authenticity of the figures and attributed the unprecedented increase to “network upgrade which increased our download speed to 42megabit/second nationwide.” 

But the new figures, as reflected in the clandestine changes made by the NCA, show that Glo never got such huge increase in data subs base. It actually lost some 15,753 data customer from 668,424 in December 2014 to 652,671 in January 2015. Its data market share therefore stood at 4.13%.

Meanwhile, in the previous erroneous report, the NCA said Glo’s data market share was 2.83%. But now that the actual figures have reduced, the NCA says Glo has 4.13% of the data market.

Again, the NCA had previously reported that Glo had 5.17% voice market share, but the now that has also dropped to 4.7%, which indicates a dip from the previous month’s 4.78%. 

With regards to the embattled Expresso, the NCA had reported that its voice subs increased by 155,491, from 119,059 to 274,550. But the corrected report shows just a marginal increase of 590 subs to 119,649.  

The NCA had also reported that Expresso lost over 33,000 data customers from 37,331 to as low as 4,601 data customers. But that has also been altered to 35,252, which means Expresso lost only 2,079 data subs within the one month period.

Expresso therefore finished the period with 0.22% data market share and not 0.41%. It also had less than one per cent voice market share.

But it would appear that the anomalies in what the NCA posted previously were not limited to the striking figures for Glo and Expresso.

Even the overall all figures were wrong and have now been corrected. Previously the NCA reported that overall subscriptions for January 2015 was over 30.78 million, but now it has reduced to 30.63 million; and it represents 115.15% penetration and not 108.48% as previously reported.

Overall data subscriptions have also been altered from over 17.2 million to 15.8 million, which actually represents a decrease from the December 2014 figure.

Interestingly, the reduced total data subscription figure rather represented more than 51.5% of the total mobile subscriptions in the country, unlike the erroneous 17.2million which was rather pegged at 49.1%.  

But the corrected report maintained that market leader MTN, lost 258,596 data subs over the period under review, which is almost 50% market share.

Vodafone’s 7.18 million voice subs base was also maintained but the voice market share increased from 23.29% to 23.43%. Meanwhile the erroneous report had stated that Vodafone’s market share dropped to 21.97%.

On the data front, the corrected figures show the previous figures for Vodafone were correct but the data market share is not 15.1% but rather 18.68%.

Both the voice and data subs figures for Tigo were also maintained in the corrected reported. But its voice market share changed from 14.28% to 13.72% and the data market share also went up from 12.25% to 14.32%. 

Finally, Airtel’s voice and data figures were also maintained but voice market share changed from 12.35% to 12.25%, while the data market share also dropped from 15.83% to 13.64%.

Industry watchers who noticed the anomalies before they were quietly altered on the NCA’s website think “someone is sleeping on the job at NCA.”

They also noted that Glo was very much aware their data customers did not increase by 1.44million and yet they went with the media hype and assigned reasons for the previously reported wrong figure.

Glo had actually admitted earlier on their their data subs represented only 17% of their total customer base and in ratio terms data to voice subs was 1:5. So pundits wondered why Glo would bask in the glory of the erroneous figures.

“That was very disingenuous of Glo,” one industry watcher said.

Meanwhile other experts insisted there was no way a telco could be losing voice subs and be recording such huge increase in data subs since the uptake of data subscriptions is mainly driven by increase in smartphones usage across networks.

Adom News has since sent a questionnaire to NCA asking what led to the grave erroneous figures published previously but the NCA has not provided any explanations.