Nigerians spent N37.8 billion on SMS in 2021 

Mobile subscribers in Nigeria spent N37.8 billion on short message service (SMS) in 2021, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The NCC, in an annual telecoms industry data released on Thursday, disclosed that a total of 9.462 billion text messages were sent by subscribers on the six networks last year.

At a fixed rate of N4.00 per SMS, this amounts to approximately N37.8 billion for the operators.

The data also showed a 15% increase in the number of text messages sent by the subscribers last year compared with the 8.2 billion messages sent in 2020.

Aside from the national SMS, the operators also recorded a total of 63 million international outgoing SMS in 2021.

An analysis of the data showed that MTN recorded the largest number of SMS sent locally within the year, with 7.9 billion SMS sent over its network. This telco accounted for 83% of total SMS sent in the country last year.

Airtel came second with 1.27 billion SMS sent over its network.

9Mobile recorded 305 million outgoing text messages for the year

Ntel’s subscribers sent 2.08 million messages in 2021

Smile Communications recorded 265,176 outgoing messages.

Globacom recorded the least sent messages in the year, with a total of 3,340 outgoing SMS recorded on the network.