Telecom Subscribers Sent Over 25.93 Billion SMS in 2022

Telecommunications subscribers in Nigeria sent over 25.93 billion Short Message Service (SMS) in the year 2022, Business Remarks can report.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) disclosed this in the newly updated 2022 Subscriber/ Network Data Yearly report.

According to the report, the total number of national SMS both sent and received as of December 2022 was 25,928,704,567. This is an increase of 28.82 per cent from that of the total SMS sent and received in the year 2021 which stood at 20,126,551,822. There was a 48.84 per cent increase in the number of SMS sent in the year 2022 compared to the year 2021.

The telecom regulator revealed that the year 2022 count of received messages also increased by 11.06 per cent higher than that of 2021.

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In 2022, MTN telecom subscribers recorded the highest count of SMS received and sent, which stood at 8,738,690,150 and 8,323,722,485 respectively. While Glo subscribers sent 3.63 billion, received on the network 777.2 million; Airtel network sent 1.88 billion, received 2.1 billion; 9mobile subscribers sent 234.8 million and received 235 million, while Smile Communications sent 173,607 and received 766,588 SMS.

In terms of international SMS sent as of December 2022 stood at 59,571,547 while   total number of SMS received was 459,329,782.

Specifically, MTN sent 22.5 million, received 14.1 million; Glo sent 224,493, received 3.63 million; Airtel sent 35.8 million, received 380.7 million; 9mobile, sent 1.39 million and received 60.7 million, while Smile sent 2,013 and received 77,288 international SMS.

The Regulator’s report further revealed that for the period under review, in the year 2022 active voice subscription for mobile (GSM) segment increased from 195.1 million subscriptions as of December 2021 to 222.2 million a year after. This indicated a 13.88 per cent gain in GSM active voice subscriptions year on year.

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In terms of market share for GSM active voice subscriptions, NCC claimed that MTN; GLO; Airtel and 9mobile each recorded 89,016,678; 60,290,012; 60,065,904 and 12,852,706 subscribers respectively. In that order MTN; GLO; Airtel and 9mobile had 40.06 per cent; 27.13 per cent; 27.03 per cent and 5.78 per cent share of the mobile GSM market respectively.

Analysing the yearly trend of the active voice subscription services in the country, for all market segments; NCC said the growth in voice subscription was ultimately driven by the mobile (GSM) market segment, which accounted for 99.8 per cent while, Fixed Wired/Wireless and VOIP market segments each accounted for 0.1 per cent each of the entire market share in terms of technology deployment.

Regional active voice subscription showed that South South had 32.6 million subscriptions; South West, 63.7 million; South East, 21.4 million; North West, 40.8 million; North East, 21.3 million and North Central, 42.5 million.

In addition, themobile operators as of December 2022 had registered 301,283,030 subscribers in the country.