The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has granted MTN’s request to partially disconnect Globacom (Glo) from its network owing to unsettled interconnect charges.

Reuben Muoka, the NCC’s Director of Public Affairs, disclosed this in a document named ‘Pre-Disconnection Notice’ on Monday.

The move follows Glo’s persistent failure to clear its outstanding debts despite multiple attempts to resolve the issue.

Under this partial disconnection, Globacom subscribers will solely receive calls from MTN users, while retaining access to other network services like outgoing calls to other networks and data services.

However, they won’t be able to initiate calls to MTN users during this period.

The statement read, “All subscribers are, therefore requested to take notice that the Commission has approved the Partial Disconnection of Globacom to MTN in accordance with Section 100 of the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003 and Paragraph 9 of the Guidelines on Procedure for Granting Approval to Disconnect Telecommunications Operators, 2012.

“At the expiration of 10 days from January 8, 2024, subscribers of Globacom will no longer be able to make calls to MTN but will be able to receive calls.

“The Partial Disconnection, however, will allow in-bound calls to the Globacom network,” it added

Nigerian telecommunication users, along with others within the country, expended a total of N3.33 trillion on various telecom services such as calls, data, SMS, and more throughout 2022, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

This information comes from the recently published ‘2022 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report’ by the NCC, which also revealed that telecom companies generated N3.33 trillion in overall revenue for that year.

The report further highlights a noteworthy growth of active voice subscriptions, rising from 195,463,898 subscriptions in 2021 to 222,571,568 by December 2022, marking a 13.86% year-on-year increase.

Commenting on the increase, it said, “The increase in the Operators’ subscriber base was attributed to a number of reasons which includes subscriber loyalty, promos, seasonal effects, aggressive consumer acquisition drive, and competitive product offerings across all the networks.”

It noted that the growth in active subscriptions impacted positively on other derived telecom indicators such as teledensity, Internet penetration as well as broadband penetration.

Data usage also continued its surge in 2022. It increased by 46.77 per cent to 518,381.78TB as of the end of the year.

The NCC stated, “There was an increase in the volume of data consumed at the year-end December 2022 when compared with the year-end December 2021.

“The total volume of data consumed by subscribers increased to 518,381.78TB as of December 2022 from 353,118.89TB as of December 2021. This represents an increase of 46.77 per cent in data consumption within the period.”

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, is facing a potential lawsuit from Twitter regarding its newly launched platform called Threads.

On Wednesday, July 5, Instagram introduced Threads, a text-based companion to its main platform that shares similarities with other text-based social platforms, including Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Meta, proudly announced on Thursday that Threads had already garnered an impressive 30 million users on its first day, far surpassing its competitors in terms of user base.

However, shortly after the unveiling of Threads, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, sent a letter to Zuckerberg accusing him of unlawfully utilizing Twitter’s “trade secrets and other intellectual property” to develop Threads as a direct competitor to Twitter, as reported by Forbes.

The attorney wrote: “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information.

“Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.” he added.

In addition, Alex Spiro further accused Meta of recruiting numerous former Twitter employees who possessed insider knowledge of Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.