Nigeria’s telecom subscribers spent a total of N123.46 billion on 20.577 billion short message service (SMS) or text messages.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said the total number of national SMS both sent and received as at December 2024 was 20.577 billion in 2024, which translates to a drop of 10.43 per cent from the total SMS sent and received in 2023 which stood at 22.973 billion.
Thus, at N6 per SMS, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) including MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, Globacom, T2 and Smile Communication shared a total of N137.8 billion in 2023 as against N124 billion shared last year.
According to a document entitled: 2024 Subscriber/Network Performance Report authored by the Policy, Competition and Economic Analysis Department of the NCC, SMS sent out in 2024 declined by 9.39 per cent compared to year 2023 while incoming SMS also decreased by 11.41 per cent than that of year 2023.
In year 2024, MTN recorded the highest count of SMS received and sent which stood at 6.966 billion and 7.229 billion respectively, smiling to the bank with N41.7 billion and N43.4 billion respectively.
During the period under review, Glo recorded 519,687,402 sent SMS and 723,541,017 received SMS making a total of 1,243,228,419.00 SMS on the network, translating to revenue of N7,459,370,514 or N7.5billion; Airtel Nigeria posted 2,530,814,229 SMS sent and 2,413,229,096 SMS received translating to a total of 4,944,043,325.00 SMS and cashing out with N29,664,259,950 or N29.7billion.
T2 recorded 109,910,509 sent SMS and 1,326,394 received SMS bringing total to 1,715,835.00 and revenue of N10,295,010 or N10.3million while Smile Communication recorded 389,441 sent and 1,326,394 received SMS respectively amounting to a total of 1,715,835.00 SMS and revenue of N10,295,010 or N10.3million.
