The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) who is charged with the responsibility of providing timely, accurate and latest telecom industry statistics in line with the obligations enshrined in the Nigerian Communications Act 2003, has released the 2022 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report.
The report analyzed the performance of operators in key areas like Mobile (GSM); fixed telephony operators (Fixed/Fixed wireless); Internet Service Providers (ISPs); Value Added Service (VAS); Collaboration and Infrastructure Sharing and other operators.
Findings of the report showed that the sector recorded huge success despite the harsh economic situation in the country.
Below are the breakdown of the industry performance report:
Active Subscriber Statistics
The number of Active Subscribers increased from 195,463,898 subscriptions in 2021 to 222,571,568 active voice subscriptions as at December 2022.
Also, Active Subscriptions increased by 27,107,670
subscriptions representing a 13.86 per cent increase in Active Subscriptions Year on Year.
According to NCC, 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,“ it further stated.
Nigeria‘s Teledensity
Nigeria’s Teledensity increased from 102.40 per cent as at December 2021 to 116.60 per cent by December 31st 2022. Active Subscriptions also increased by 13.86 per cent, indicating that over a tenth of persons per 100 subscribers were connected Year on Year.
Internet Subscribers, Broadband Penetration
The number of Internet Subscribers increased from 141,971,560 subscription as at December 2021 to 154,847,901 Subscriptions as at December 2022, representing an increase of 9.06 per cent.
Broadband penetration also increased from 40.88 per cent as at December 2021 to 47.36 per cent as at December 2022. Similarly, broadband subscriptions increased from 78,041,883 subscriptions in December 2021 to 90,398,960 subscriptions as at December 2022.
Data Usage in Terabytes
There was an increase in the volume of data consumed in the year end December 2022 when compared with the year-end December 2021. The
total volume of data consumed by subscribers increased to 518,381.78TB as at December 2022 from 353,118.89TB as at December 2021. This represents an increase of 46.77 per cent in data consumption within the period.
Short Message Service
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.
A total of 14.08 billion text messages were sent by subscribers on the five networks last year.
There was a 48.8 per cent 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 per cent to 11.8 billion.This brought the total SMS sent and received in 2022 to 25.9 billion, a 28.82 per cent increase from the 20.1 billion that was recorded in 2021.
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.
Infrastructure development
In terms of industry infrastructural development, NCC said substantial telecoms infrastructure deployments were recorded in the year under review by the service providers.
A total of 34,862 towers were recorded from telecoms operators across the country, the Commission said, adding that the operators also reported a total number of 127, 294 base stations; while microwave coverage recorded last year stood at 289,270.48km.
It disclosed that a total number of 125 Gateways were in use in the telecoms industry as of December 2022, while fiber optics deployment stood at 96,198 km (terrestrial fiber & submarine cable).
GSM, Fixed Wired Operators‘ Earnings
The GSM operators’ earnings represented an 18.7 per cent increase when compared with N3.2 trillion recorded in 2021.
The data also showed the dominance of the mobile network operators as they accounted for 86 per cent of the industry’s revenue.
Fixed wired operators invested N61.3 million, operated with N841.7 million and earned N385 million. The Internet service providers spent N5.24 billion in CAPEX with an operating cost of N71.2 billion and earned N92 billion in revenue. The value-added service (VAS) providers saw N417 million CAPEX, operating cost of N14.9 billion and earned N40.7 billion.
Collocation and infrastructure sharing companies got N3.2 billion in revenue and operating costs of N3.18 billion and invested N326.9 million. Other telecoms operators, according to NCC, spent N524 million on CAPEX investment, operated with N6 billion and got a revenue of N5.59 billion.
CAPEX Declines, OPEX Increases
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 per cent 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 per cent in the year. Operators spent N2 trillion on their operations in 2022 compared with N1.7 trillion they spent in 2021.
Foreign Direct Investments
The telecoms sector, was not immune to the harsh economic conditions, insecurity and foreign exchange (FX) crisis, as Foreign Direct Investment (FDIs) fell by almost 50 per cent in 2022.
The telecoms regulator puts FDIs that entered the sector in 2022 at $399.9 million, compared to $753 million recorded in 2021, showing a gap of $353.1 million or 46.9 per cent.
NCC also informed that telecoms industry’s contribution to the gross domestic products (GDP) increased from 12.61 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 13.55 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022.ww
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