CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The telecommunications (telecom) market is a part of the information and communication technology industry. The market is primarily engaged in operating and providing access to facilities for the transmission of voice, data, text and video (Businesswire, 2016). Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical or other electromagnetic systems (ITU 2015). It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication.

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), 97 per cent of the world population lived within reach of a mobile cellular signal and 93 per cent within reach of a 3G (or higher) network. In the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, over 95 per cent of the population is covered by a 3G or higher mobile broadband network. In the Arab States the figure stands at 91 per cent; the Commonwealth of Independent States, 88 per cent; and Africa, 79 per cent. Of the 85 countries that provided data on mobile phone ownership, 61 have a higher proportion of men with mobile phones than women (ITU, 2019).

Since the introduction of GSM to Nigeria, there has however been a significant improvement as total active subscriptions. According to the Nigeria Communication Commission (2020), telecoms data for Q4 2019 reflected that a total of 184,699,409 subscribers were active on voice as against 179,176,930 in Q3 2019 and 172,824,239 in Q4 2018. This represented 3.08% increase in voice subscriptions Quarter-on Quarter and 6.87% Year-on -Year. Similarly, a total of 126,078,999 subscribers were active on internet as against 123,163,027 in Q3 2019 and 112,065,740 in Q4 2018. This represented 2.37% growth in internet subscriptions Quarter on-Quarter and 12.50% Year -on -Year.

However, uncertainty met with this important sector of Nigeria when the Federal Government gave it official ban on Twitter. Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface or its mobile-device application software . Suffice to say that this social network can be assessed using mobile data provided by telecommunication companies hence it is no doubt that such ban will have an effect on the profitability of telecommunication sector in Nigeria. Therefore it is upon this premise that this study id set to examine the effect of twitter ban on telecommunication companies in Nigeria.

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