Nigerians and other telecommunication consumers within Nigeria exchanged over 25.93 billion text messages locally in 2022, the Nigerian Communications Commission has said.

The NCC disclosed this in its newly released ‘2022 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report.’

According to the report, there was a 28.82 per increase in the total number of text messages sent and received on a year-on-year basis.

The report further showed that about 14.09 billion SMS messages were sent, and about 11.84 billion were received

It was also disclosed that MTN recorded the highest number of text messages exchanged.

The report read in part, “The total number of national SMS both sent and received as at December 2022 was 25,928,704,567. This is an increase of 28.82 per cent from that of the total SMS sent and received in year 2021 that stood at 20,126,551,822 SMS.

“There was a 48.84 per cent increase in the number of SMS sent in year 2022 compared to year 2021. Conversely, the year 2022 count of received SMS also increased by 11.06 per cent higher than that of year 2021.

“In year 2022, MTN recorded the highest count of SMS received and sent which stood at 8,738,690,150 and 8,323,722,485, respectively.”

The report also revealed that International SMS sent as at December 2022 was 59,571,547 while the total number of SMS received was 459,329,782.

Saturday Punch earlier reported that Nigerians and other telecommunication consumers within Nigeria spent N3.33tn on calls, data, SMS, and other telecom services in 2022.