Voice and data fetch N2.68tr, up 19.06% YoY
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Telephone users spent N2.68 trillion for calls and data on just two networks – MTN and Airtel – in 2022, which rose 19.06 per cent on N2.25 trillion in 2021, according to the 2022 full-year (FY 2022) financial reports of the two telecom firms.
Airtel made N488.24 billion ($1.06 billion) revenue from voice in 2022 and N390.50 billion ($847 million) from data, against 2021 sums for voice at N441.22 billion ($957 million) and data at N318.58 billion ($691 million).
Voice fetched N1.04 trillion for MTN in 2022 and data N764.82 billion, compared with N970.85 billion (voice) and N520.54 billion (data) in 2021.
Airtel voice earnings rose 10.66 per cent and data 22.58 per cent year-on-year (YoY). MTN voice revenue grew 6.78 per cent and data 46.93 per cent.
Experts predict data revenue will surpass that of voice in the next 18 months.
“Voice revenue increased by 15.4 per cent in constant currency, largely driven by customer base growth of 13.0 per cent supported by voice ARPU growth of 2.2 per cent,” Airtel said, per reporting by The PUNCH.
“Data revenue increased by 26.6 per cent in constant currency, driven by both data customer base growth of 16.0 per cent and data ARPU growth of 9.2 per cent.
“Over the last year, we have enhanced our 4G network with ample data network capacity to provide high-speed data to our customers with almost 100 per cent of our sites now on 4G and a data capacity increase of 28 per cent.
“This has contributed to 4G data customer growth of 20.7 per cent. Data usage per customer increased by 25.6 per cent facilitating continued data ARPU growth. Data usage per customer reached 5 GB per customer per month from 4 GB per customer per month in the previous period.”
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Voice revenue in steady recovery
MTN Nigeria Chief Executive Officer Karl Toriola disclosed “voice revenue maintained a steady recovery as more customers were reactivated and gross connections ramped up.
“This was backed by our customer value management initiatives through which we managed churn and drove increased usage from the existing base.
“As a result, voice revenue rose by 6.8 per cent, bucking the slower growth trend of general voice traffic as data traffic continues to increase.
“Data revenue rose by 46.9 per cent on the sustained growth of our active data users and increased data usage.
“This was supported by our 4G network expansion drive and enhanced quality and capacity of the network to support the rising data traffic. Our 4G network now covers 79.1 per cent of the population, up from 70.3 per cent in December 2021.
“Data traffic rose by 66.6 per cent, of which 79.5 per cent was carried on the 4G network.
“Usage (MB per user) grew by 47.4 per cent. In addition, we added over 5.5 million new smartphones to our network in 2022, bringing smartphone penetration to 52.4 per cent.”
There were over 222 million mobile subscriptions in 2022, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
 revenue from voice in 2022 and N390.50 billion ($847 million) from data){kind=link}