Telecommunication giants, MTN and Airtel recorded a revenue of N1.92tn from calls and data between January and September, 2022.
This is an 18.27 per cent increase from the N1.62tn that was earned by the companies on calls and data in the corresponding period of 2021.
This was disclosed by the data from the financial results of MTN Nigeria Communications Plc and Airtel Africa’s Nigeria subsidiary.
According to the data, subscribers of MTN Nigeria spent N753.78bn and N549.66bn on calls and data respectively while Airtel Nigeria subscribers spent N342.71bn ($780m) and N274.61bn ($625m) on calls and data, respectively.
Furthermore, MTN, in its result, noted that inflation, supply chain uncertainties and foreign exchange scarcity were putting financial pressure on consumers and businesses.
“Our operating environment remained challenging in the first nine months of 2022. The ongoing global macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility continued to drive up energy, food, and general inflation, with the annual inflation rate in Nigeria rising to a 17-year high of 20.8 per cent in September 2022.
“Supply chain uncertainties were exacerbated by the availability of foreign currency needed for capital expenditure. These headwinds continue to put severe financial pressure on consumers and businesses.”
MTN’s result disclosed that data traffic grew by 70.6 per cent y-o-y, while Airtel revealed that data usage per customer increased to 4.8 GB per month (from 3.9 GB in the prior period).
Meanwhile, MTN has recorded mobile subscriber base of 74.1 million users, as it gained 5.7 million new mobile subscribers in nine months, a 9.7 percent increase over the same period last year.
According to the teleco, the introduction of 5G and other data services incentives increased its active users base to 38 million, a significant 14.6 percent increase over the previous year.
The telco said it deployed 8230 4G sites and 218 5G sites, representing 84.4 percent of sites deployed during the period.
“In Q4 2022, we plan to reach 80 percent 4G population coverage, deploy additional 362 5G sites and bring 5G to smartphones.
“The 5G technology extends the capacity of our data network. It delivers higher speeds and lower latency, supporting our home broadband strategy and unlocking many new use cases for consumers and enterprises,” It said.
