Following several undelivered Short Message Service (SMS) in 2023, telecommunications subscribers in Nigeria spent N44.7 billion to exchange messages digitally across networks.
Investors King gathered that undelivered SMS remains a challenge for telecommunication services in the country.
Despite charges imposed by mobile network operators (MNOs), this issue has often caused discord between subscribers and operators.
An analysis of the recently released 2023 Subscriber/Network Performance Report revealed that a total of 22,973,122,650.64 SMS were exchanged across networks during the year. Out of which 11,176,161,289.64 SMS were sent, while 11,796,961,361.00 SMS were received.
Specifically:
- MTN, the largest operator by subscription and market share, recorded 16.9 billion SMS (8.2 billion sent and 8.5 billion received).
- Globacom handled 1.35 billion SMS (656.2 million sent and 694 million received).
- Airtel processed 4.4 billion SMS (2 billion sent and 2.3 billion received).
- 9mobile accounted for 458.1 million SMS (299 million sent and 158.2 million received).
- Smile Communications recorded 1,226,287 SMS (263,458 sent and 962,829 received).
The data further revealed that the 22.9 billion SMS exchanged in 2023 represented an 11.38% decline compared to the 25,924,511,108 SMS recorded in 2022.
With telcos charging N4 per SMS sent, Nigerians spent N44.7 billion on approximately 11.2 billion SMS sent in 2023.
Meanwhile, the National Communication Commission (NCC) revealed that there was a 20.66% increase in the number of SMS sent in 2023 compared to 2022. The count of incoming SMS also rose by 0.35% year-on-year.
For international SMS in December 2023:
- 75,414,619 SMS were sent, and 264,265,952 SMS were received, totaling 339,680,571 SMS.
- MTN led with 34.5 million SMS sent, followed by Globacom (6.88 million), Airtel (275.1 million), 9mobile (23 million), and Smile (54,008).