Telcos recorded 289 billion calls in 2019 – NCC

MTN and Airtel are the pacesetters in the volume of national and international calls routed through their networks in 2019.

Nigerian Communications Commission data released also showed that most Voice calls over the Internet were routed through the two networks.

The 2019 Subscriber and Network data report indicated that a total of 287.03 billion outgoing and incoming local and national traffic were channelled through six network operators.

As of December 2019, the total outgoing national traffic was 149.58 billion while total incoming local and national traffic was 137.44 billion.

The regulator added that MTN had the highest outgoing call traffic of 97.29 billion and incoming telephone traffic of 98.82 billion in 2019, accounting for 68 per cent of the total national incoming and outgoing traffic.

Airtel came behind MTN with 32.85 billion outgoing call traffic and 32.93 billion incoming call traffic, representing 23 per cent of the total national outgoing and incoming call traffic.

Globacom ranked third with a total of 37.81 billion call traffic in 2019, comprising of 14.38 billion outgoing traffic and 23.43 billion incoming traffic, representing 13 per cent of the total national call traffic.

9mobile had a total of 3.94 billion outgoing traffic and 5.55 billion incoming traffic, representing three per cent of the national incoming and outgoing traffic and came fourth position.

Ntel ranked fifth with 850.95 million outgoing calls and 69.9 million incoming call traffic, representing 0.32 per cent of the national figure.

Smile recorded the least call traffic of 314.4 million, comprising of 276.61 million outgoing calls and 37.79 million incoming calls, representing 0.11 per cent of the national figure.

Based on the performance of networks in the international call traffic category, the industry had a total of 1.96 billion international call traffic from six operators.

MTN led with a total of 1.15 billion outgoing and incoming call traffic, representing 59 per cent of the total international figure.

Airtel ranked second with a total of 381.45 million outgoing and incoming call traffic, representing 19 per cent of the international call traffic.

Globacom also ranked third place with 271.29 million outgoing and incoming call traffic, indicating 14 per cent of the total international figure.

9mobile ranked fourth with eight per cent, recording 153.93 million outgoing and incoming call traffic in 2019.

Ntel recorded a total of 874,106 outgoing and incoming call traffic in 2019, representing 0.04 per cent of the total international call traffic.

Smile, however recorded the least international call traffic at 451,557.