Nigerians Spent 22.3Billion Minutes Talking on Phone in 2012

Nigerians reportedly spent an equivalent of 42,427 years, talking on the phone last year alone according to data provided by Price- WaterHouseCooper, a global consulting firm.

In other words, the over 110 million active telecoms subscribers on GSM and CDMA networks spent a total of 22.3 billion minutes talking in 2012.

According to Price- WaterHouseCooper, Nigeria’s outgoing and incoming on-net and off net calls totaled 22.3 billion minutes in 2012, while 1.8 billion text, SMS, messages were set within the same period.

It was gathered that while the total call times recorded in Nigeria increased by over five billion minutes from 17 billion in 2011 to 22.3 billion at the end of 2012, SMS volumes also increased by three billion, rising from 1.5 to 1.8 billion during the same period.

With telecoms operators running different disparate tariffs for on-net calls, ranging from N9 to N12, industry analysts said average tariff charge per minute of call could be conservatively pegged at N15.

At such, by multiplying 22.3 billion minutes of calls made in 2012 by N10, the calls volume is conservatively valued at N223bn.

A breakdown of the data from Price- WaterHouseCooper, revealed that in 2011, minutes of calls for outgoing on-net; outgoing of-net to mobile; outgoing off-net to fixed networks; outgoing off-net to international networks; outgoing calls to voicemail; outgoing inbound roaming calls hit 7.3 billion; four billion; 288 million; 315 million; 29 million and three million respectively.

Correspondingly, these figures, in 2012, increased to 10.2 billion; 4.7 billion; 352 million; 403 million; 10 million and three million.

On the incoming calls during the period, minutes of incoming calls from other mobile operators increased from 3.9 billion to 4.6 billion; calls from fixed operators increased from 472 million to 537 million; calls from International operators into the country moved up from 745 million to 877 million; while inbound roaming increased slightly from two million to three million.

Speaking on the SMS volume, Mr. Alastair Macpherson, Quality Assurance Partner at PriceWater- HouseCooper, stated that while outgoing SMS on-net increased from 911 million from 2011 to 958 million in 2012; outgoing SMS to other mobile operators moved from 316 million to 449 million, while SMS from other mobile operators also increased from 327 million to 421 million during the same period.

Though, 2012 recorded increase in minutes of successful calls between 2011 and 2012, which might be as result of improved services, National Mirror learnt that the minutes of calls had also fallen on an annual basis.