Why Nobody Wants to Buy a 'Phone Number' Anymore

I remember the era of Starcomms and Multi-Links. Having a "fixed wireless" phone on your desk in Lagos was a status symbol. You’d carry that bulky thing around like a trophy until you drove past the boundary of its coverage and the signal vanished into thin air. Seeing the latest NCC data about Smile and NTEL feels like a bad case of déjà vu. We’re watching licensed VoIP go the way of the dodo, and it’s not because the tech is bad—it’s because the UX of modern apps simply ate its lunch.

The Smile CEO, Ehiagwina, makes a fair point about "hard-coded" vs "soft-coded" tech. When you’re building licensed VoIP, you’re dealing with masts, radio frequencies, and heavy infrastructure. But as a developer, I look at it differently. From where I sit—usually behind a screen in a Gbagada workstation with a cold bottle of Maltina—the "hard-coded" stuff is just too much friction for the average Nigerian.

The Friction Problem

Why would a guy running a spare parts shop in Onitsha care about "fixed call rates to China" via a dedicated VoIP line? If he needs to talk to his supplier in Guangzhou, he’s opening WhatsApp. If the network is shaky, he sends a voice note. The "Sapa" struggle is real, and the first thing to go is any subscription that feels like an "extra" cost.

WhatsApp, Telegram, and even Zoom have turned voice into just another data packet. For the user, there's no mental gap between "I'm browsing" and "I'm calling." Licensed VoIP tries to recreate the old-school phone call experience on top of the internet, but Nigerians have already moved on to an app-centric world.

Security vs. Convenience

I laughed a bit at the claim that VoIP is "harder to hack" than WhatsApp. Sure, on paper, a dedicated, closed-loop VoIP system might have a smaller attack surface. But tell that to the person whose biggest security concern is a "What's my OTP?" scam.

For the techies I know in Akure or the founders grinding in Yaba, the trade-off is clear. We build on what people use. If I'm integrating a call feature into a fintech app today, I’m looking at WebRTC or a flexible API. I’m not asking my users to go buy a Smile SIM card just to get "predictable costs." In Nigeria, the only predictable thing is that things will be unpredictable.

The Ghost of CDMA

The decline from 371,000 lines to 192,000 in less than three years is a nose-dive. NTEL posting zero subscribers is even more tragic. It reminds me of those abandoned masts you see in some parts of the country—relics of a time when we thought "fixed" was the future.

The CDMA guys failed because they couldn't scale and their handsets were proprietary. VoIP operators today are facing a similar "walled garden" issue. If I have to jump through hoops to manage a separate subscription just for "clearer voice," I’m probably just going to stick to my MTN or Airtel data plan and manage the "can you hear me now?" lag on a WhatsApp call.

No Gree for Dying Tech

It’s expensive to run these networks. Between the cost of diesel for masts and the licensing fees, the overhead is a killer. When you’re competing against "free" (well, data-cost) apps that have billions of dollars in R&D, you’re basically bringing a knife to a drone fight.

I don't think VoIP as a technology is dying—we use it every time we hop on a Google Meet. But the business of being a "VoIP Operator" in Nigeria? That's on life support. We are in the era of the "soft-coded" world now. If you can’t push an update to fix your user's problem in five minutes, you’re already losing.

The market has spoken, and it doesn't want another phone line. It just wants the data to keep flowing so the voice notes can keep dropping. That's the reality of the hustle.