Telephone subscribers in Nigeria spend a total of N79, 274, 411, 217. 32 through the use of short message service (SMS), despite crushing double inflation that has made disposable income at the disposal of an average worker.
According to the statistics released from the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the total number of national SMS sent and received as of December last year was 19,818,602,804.33.
However, this was considered an increase of 14.13 per cent from that of the total SMS sent and received in 2020 which stood at 17,364,524,490.02 SMS.
SMS cost has been fixed at N4 per SMS which translates to N79,274,411,217.32 spent on SMS by subscribers during the year under review while N69,458,097,960.08 or N69.5 billion was spent during a corresponding period in 2020.
The statistics showed that there was a 15.1 per cent increase in the number of SMS sent out in 2021 compared to 2020. Conversely, last year’s count of incoming SMS also increased by 16.63 per cent higher than that of 2020.
MTN which was the largest operator by every parameter recorded the highest count of SMS received and sent at 8,234,925,441 and 7,882,538.193, thus coasting home with a gross total of 16,117,463,634.
On the GLO network, a total of 3,340,000 SMS were sent while 61,709,380 was received making a total of 61,712,720 SMS.
Also, Airtel recorded 1,272,460,703 sent SMS while it received 2,056,406,293 SMS marking of 3,328,866,996 total SMS. EMTS which is trading as 9mobile in Nigeria had 305,077,330.33 SMS sent through its network; received 304,611,422.20 SMS with a gross total of 305,077,330.33.
Smile Communication is another operator on the network which recorded 265,176 sent SMS and received 1,023,489 SMS making its total stand at 1,288,665.