Nigerian Anti-Kidnapping Drive Costs Bharti Airtel $110 Million
Nigerian regulators barred voice services for 13.6 million Airtel subscribers in April 2022.
(Bloomberg) -- Bharti Airtel Ltd., the wireless phone operator owned by Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal, said efforts by Nigeria to curb rampant kidnappings cost the company an estimated $110 million in annual revenue after authorities suspended unregistered users.
Nigerian regulators barred voice services for 13.6 million Airtel subscribers in April 2022 after they failed to link their phone lines to national identity numbers, the New Delhi-based firm said in an earnings filing on Tuesday. Just under half of those have since submitted IDs, while only 3.5 million customers have been fully verified and unbarred, hitting group revenue growth in the year through March by almost 2.4%.
The customer shut down in Africa’s most populous nation hurt operators from Bharti’s local unit Airtel Africa Plc to South Africa’s MTN Group Ltd., which runs Nigeria’s largest network, as the government struggles to quash a thriving kidnapping-for-ransom industry that sees thousands of people abducted by bandits each year.
Kidnappers usually call relatives of their victims with unregistered subscriber identity module, or SIM, cards, which authorities in Nigeria are unable to trace. About 75 million phone numbers were estimated to have been affected by the rule imposed last year.
“We continue to work closely with the regulator and impacted customers to help them comply with the registration requirements,” Bharti Airtel, which has 60.3 million subscribers in the West African country, said in the statement.
It’s “making every effort to minimize disruption and ensure affected customers can continue to benefit from full service connectivity as soon as possible,” the company said.
Along with attempting to register dropped subscribers, Nigeria’s mobile-phone operators are also fighting with the country’s banks. A telecoms lobby group said earlier this week that firms will stop providing dedicated text message services to lenders until they pay 120 billion naira ($258 million) in arrears.
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