Unless urgent measures are deployed, indications have emerged of more telephone service congestions in urban centers across Nigeria. This is based on the latest insights on Nigeria’s telecom sector produced by Ookla on behalf of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
Rural Connectivity Progress
Two insights, Connectivity Report: Geospatial Urban-Rural Performance and Capacity Limitation Detection and Its Impact on QoS, showed that Nigeria’s mobile connectivity landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation. The reports revealed both encouraging progress in rural connectivity and mounting challenges in urban centers. It painted a picture of a nation racing to bridge the digital divide while grappling with the strains of rapid urbanisation.
Released Thursday, the Connectivity Report highlighted significant strides in rural network performance. Over six months, total network tests surged from 266,970 to 543,123, underscoring growing user engagement. More importantly, rural median download speeds climbed from 15.0 Mbps to 16.4 Mbps, while upload speeds skyrocketed by 47.5 per cent, rising from 6.1 Mbps to 9.0 Mbps. Latency also improved, dropping from 37ms to 34ms, an eight per cent reduction that makes video calls and mobile payments smoother.
Ookla noted that these improvements are not just technical milestones; they carry profound social and economic implications. “Farmers and small traders can now leverage high-quality video for social commerce and real-time inventory management. Students in underserved areas can stream educational content with reliability comparable to urban peers. And with latency gaps narrowing to just 5ms between rural and urban zones, mobile money transactions are faster and more dependable, reducing failed payments in remote communities,” the report stated.
Ookla noted that operator investment is the primary driver of quality, saying top rural speeds now exceed some competitors’ urban speeds. This signals a turning point where rural infrastructure is no longer a secondary priority but a competitive edge.
Carrier Performance Variations
Further analysis revealed that carrier performance varies sharply. MTN stands out, delivering rural speeds of 23.3Mbps, faster than several urban competitors. Airtel, meanwhile, provides reliable urban service with median speeds of 18.4Mbps. Glo remains stagnant at 8.8Mbps in rural areas, while newcomer T2 has emerged with a median rural speed of 16.4 Mbps, signaling fresh competition. Technology plays a decisive role. LTE (4G) continues to anchor rural connectivity with speeds between 10–16 Mbps, while 5G is reshaping urban clusters with peak speeds of ~200 Mbps. Yet, the persistence of single-digit 3G speeds in some areas underscores the unevenness of progress.
Urban Capacity Crunch
While rural areas are catching up, the Capacity Limitation Report warns of growing strains in Nigeria’s cities. Operators have aggressively expanded their urban footprints since September 2025. MTN grew its coverage area by 46.7 per cent to 23,376 km², Airtel by 56.3 per cent to 19,899 km², and Glo by 67.6 per cent to 15,496 km². T2 more than doubled its presence, expanding by 104.7 per cent to 1,951 km². But expansion has come at a cost: congestion. MTN’s urban download constraints rose to 6.7 per cent, while Airtel and Glo reported 2.6 per cent and 2.8 per cent respectively. Airtel’s resilience stands out, despite its rapid growth, its congestion increased by only 0.6 percentage points, suggesting efficient resource allocation. T2, with its smaller localized user base, remains at zero per cent congestion.
The report explains: “Download capacity is significantly more impacted than Upload. Congestion is primarily driven by consumption-heavy activities like high-definition video streaming and large file downloads.” This reflects Nigeria’s surging appetite for data-intensive services, from streaming platforms to cloud applications. Further, the capacity crunch is most visible in Nigeria’s high-density hubs. In Lagos, limitations are concentrated in Ikeja and the central city corridor. Abuja faces constraints in Gwarinpa and the city center. These bottlenecks highlight the challenge of scaling infrastructure in fast-growing urban environments where demand often outpaces supply.
Nationally, MTN and Airtel maintain the largest rural footprints of 72,910 km² and 71,305 km² respectively, underscoring their dual role in serving both sprawling rural communities and congested urban centers.
Paradox of Progress
The juxtaposition of the two reports reveals a paradox. On one hand, rural Nigeria is experiencing unprecedented connectivity gains, empowering businesses, education, and financial inclusion. On the other, urban Nigeria is straining under the weight of its own success, with congestion threatening to erode quality of service. According to Ookla, for rural users, the leap from 3G-era frustrations to LTE-enabled reliability is transformative. Video calls that once buffered endlessly now stream smoothly in HD. Mobile payments that took 10 seconds now process instantly. Large file uploads, once prone to failure, are now fast and successful. Even e-government services, once desktop-bound, are now mobile-optimized, expanding civic access.
For urban users, however, the story is more complex. While 5G offers blistering speeds in select clusters, the average experience is increasingly shaped by congestion. The growth of streaming, gaming, and remote work has created asymmetric loads, with download capacity bearing the brunt. Without sustained investment, the promise of urban connectivity risks being undermined by its own popularity.
