MTN Nigeria Communications PLC has gone into a national roaming partnership with 9mobile and the pilot run in Ondo State is currently live.
This partnership essentially covers one-way roaming, allowing 9mobile subscribers to roam on the MTN 2G network.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) granted approval for the two mobile network operators (MNOs) to carry out trial on National Roaming Service for a period of three months.
Roaming Service enables a mobile subscriber to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services when travelling outside a particular network geographical area by utilising the network coverage of other networks with roaming arrangements to access service.
According to the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, the primary objective of the National Roaming Service trial is to encourage network resource sharing among operators.
“The successful implementation of the trial will enable EMTS subscribers to access MTN network service within the National Roaming trial geographical area without the need for an MTN Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) card,” Danbatta said.
MTN is the largest Telco in Nigeria with 83 million subscribers as at August 2020, equivalent to 40.9 percent of the total according to NCC data. 9Mobile on the other hand has 12.3 million subscribers connected to its network, equivalent to 6.09 percent market share.