Nigerians consumed 518,381 terabytes of data in 2022 – NCC

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed that telecommunications subscribers in Nigeria consumed a total of 518,381.89 terabytes of data in 2022.

The telecom regulator disclosed this in the Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report 2022 just released.

This showed that data consumption in the country increased by 47% when compared with the 353,118.89 terabytes consumed in 2021.

According to the report, the number of Internet subscriptions across the networks also increased from 141.9 million as of December 2021 to 154.8 million as of December 2022 representing an increase of 9.06%.

Aside from the increase in subscriptions, which obviously pushed up data consumption, the launch of 5G in the year by MTN also contributed to the jump.

With the expansion of 4G network, which delivers faster speed compared with 4G, Nigerians have been spending more on data as they are able to stream high-quality videos online.

The consumption is expected to increase further as the operators gradually roll out 5G, which delivers 100 times the speed of 4G.

Revenue jump

Telecommunications operators in the country also recorded an increase in their revenue for the year. According to the report, the total revenue of telecom companies for the year stood at N3.8 trillion.

This represents an 18.7% increase when compared with N3.2 trillion recorded in 2021.

The data also showed the dominance of the mobile network operators comprising MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile as they accounted for 86% of the industry’s revenue.

The revenue of the 4 mobile operators for the year stood at 3.3 trillion, while other players including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Value Added Service (VAS) providers, and fixed wired operators, recorded about N500 billion in revenue in total.

CAPEX decline, operating cost increase

Meanwhile, the telecom companies reduced their capital expenditure in the year amid a rise in operating costs obviously pushed by inflation and the forex volatility.

According to the industry data, all the operators spent the sum of N785.7 billion on CAPEX in 2022. This represents a 30% decrease in CAPEX when compared with the N1.1 trillion spent in 2021.

On the other hand, the operating cost for the companies increased by 17.6% in the year.

According to the report, the operators spent N2 trillion on their operations in 2022 compared with N1.7 trillion they spent in 2021.

Active subscriptions

NCC further disclosed that the number of active subscriptions across the telecom networks increased from 195.4 million in 2021 to 222.5 million as of December 2022.

This showed that the operators added 27.1 million subscriptions in the year, representing a 13.86% increase in active subscriptions year on year.

“The increase in the Operators’ subscriber base was attributed to a number of reasons which includes subscriber loyalty, promos, seasonal effects, aggressive consumer acquisition drive, and competitive product offerings across all the networks.

“The increase in Active Subscription impacted positively on other derived telecom indicators such as Teledensity, Internet Penetration as well as Broadband Penetration,” NCC stated in the report.