11 July 2022

Telecos in Nigeria, comprising MTN, Globacom, Airtel, 9Mobile, Smile Communications and Ntel, generated a total of ₦37.8bn from short message service (SMS) in 2021, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The NCC 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 ₦4.00 per SMS, this amounts to approximately ₦37.8bn for the operators.

This data suggested that Nigerians still pay for individual text messages, despite the availability of different internet-based free messaging platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Signal and Viber. There was also 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.