National SMS Figures Increase by 14.13% Amid Wide Use of WhatApp & Others

The Total Number of national SMS both sent and received in Nigeria has continued to increase despite the wide embrace and use of messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegraph by the telecoms subscribers.

According to the 2021 Subscriber/network data Annual Report released by the Nigerian Communications Commission, (NCC), as at December 2021 there was 19,818,602,804.33, which was an increase of 14.13% from that
of the total SMS sent and received in year 2020 that stood at 17,364,524,490.02 SMS.

The report which was prepared by the Policy Competition and Economic Analysis of the Commission, there was a 15.1% increase in the number of SMS sent out in year 2021 compared to year 2020.

The report, which was sighted by the TechnologyMirror further showed that the Year 2021 count of incoming SMS also increased by 16.63% higher than that of Year 2020.

The NCC said that in Year 2021, MTN recorded the highest count of SMS received and sent which stood at 8,234,925,441 and 7,882,538,193 respectively.

And for International SMS in 2021, the report indicated that the total number of international SMS sent as at
December 2021 was 63,009,474 while total number of SMS received was 340,655,884.

Meanwhile MTN Nigeria maintains its lead of the market by 38 percent while Airtel and Glo battles second place by 28 percent leaving 9Mobile with 6 percent share of the market.