MTN, Airtel, others raked in N56.3 billion from SMS in 2022

Telecommunications operators in Nigeria comprising MTN, GlobalCom, Airtel, 9Mobile, and Smile Communications, generated a total of N53.6 billion from short message service (SMS) in 2022, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The NCC in its annual telecoms industry data just released disclosed that a total of 14.08 billion text messages were sent by subscribers on the 5 networks last year.

At a fixed rate of N4.00 per SMS, this amounts to approximately N56.3 billion for the operators.

The data also showed there was a 48.8% increase in the number of text messages sent by subscribers last year. Total SMS sent in 2021 stood at 9.46 billion compared with 14.08 billion in 2022.

In the same year, received SMS by subscribers across the networks also increased by 11.06% to 11.8 billion.

This brought the total SMS sent and received in 2022 to 25.9 billion, a 28.82% increase from the 20.1 billion that was recorded in 2021.

This indicated that Nigerians are still sending paid text messages amidst the availability of different internet-based free messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegrams, etc.

The breakdown

An analysis of the data showed that MTN recorded the largest number of SMS sent and received locally within the year. The number of SMS sent and received on the telco’s network stood at 8.3 billion and 8.7 billion respectively. The company raked in N33.3 billion from the messages sent.

Globacom came second with 3.6 billion SMS sent over its network, amounting to N14.5 billion and 777.2 million received in 2022. The third largest operator by subscriber number, Airtel, also recorded 1.8 billion sent messages at N7.5 billion and 2 billion messages received.

For 9mobile, the total SMS sent on the network in 2022 stood at 234.8 million (N93.9 million) while a total of 235 million messages were received. Smile Communications recorded the least SMS count as 173,607 (N694,428) messages were sent and 766,588 received on the network in the year under review.


Aside from the national SMS, the operators also recorded a total of 518.9 million international SMS in 2022. This comprised 59.5 million sent messages and 459.3 million received SMS.

What you should know

With the proliferation of Over The Top (OTT) services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and other messaging platforms, telecom operators in Nigeria have been complaining of dwindling revenue from calls and SMS.

However, industry analysts noted that while the rate at which telecom subscribers use SMS might have reduced due to the embrace of OTTs, its use cannot be completely taken over by the free messaging platforms.

According to them, some messages, especially for formal communications are best sent via SMS, hence, text messages may never be out of use by subscribers.