The amount spent on telecom services reached N3.86 trillion in 2022 due to increased call time and video streaming.
This information was provided by the Nigerian Communications Commission in its recently published “2022 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report.”
It was highlighted that this represented an increase of 18.74% over the N3.25 trillion spent in 2021, showing a steady increase in Nigerians’ dependency on telecom services.
According to the commission, the overall number of active subscribers climbed by 13.86% from the end of 2021 to the end of 2022, reaching 222,571,568 active voice subscriptions.
In a statement about the rise, it was stated that “a number of factors, including subscriber loyalty, promotions, seasonal effects, aggressive consumer acquisition drive, and competitive product offerings across all the networks,” were responsible for the rise in operators’ subscriber bases.
As a result of the completion of its examination of the subscriber registration database, the sale and registration of new SIMs, SIM swaps, and all sporting activities were once again permitted.
The increase in active subscriptions, according to the NCC, had a beneficial effect on other derived telecom measures like teledensity, Internet penetration, and broadband penetration.
Data usage increased by 46.77% to 518,381.78TB in 2022 from 353,118.89TB in 2021, which had been attributed to the growth in video streaming due to the rise in smartphone usage.
The NCC reported, “When compared to the year’s conclusion in December 2021, there was an increase in the volume of data used.
“The total amount of data that subscribers consumed increased from 353,118.89TB in December 2021 to 518,381.78TB in December 2022. This shows an increase in data consumption of 46.77% throughout the time period.”
Internet customers climbed from 141.97 million in December 2021 to 154.85 million in 2022, a 9.06 percent gain.
With penetration rising to 47.36% from 40.88% and subscriptions rising from 78,041,883 subscriptions in December 2021 to 90,398,960 subscriptions in December 2022, more individuals became connected to broadband services in 2022.
A 17.59% rise from the 173,555,413,817.69 minutes recorded in 2021, the total outgoing local and national traffic for calls reached 204,091,441,469.16 minutes in 2022.
SMS remained a viable communication method as of December 2022, there were 25,928,704,567 national SMS transmitted and received, a 28.82% increase over the 20,126,551,822 SMS reported in 2021.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, recently said that as of the end of 2021, investments in the telecoms sector were expected to total $75.6 billion.
