Report Rates Airtel as Fastest Broadband in Nigeria

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

A report released by Ookla, a global leader in mobile and broadband network intelligence, testing applications and technology, has rated Airtel as the fastest broadband in Nigeria.

In the report, it was stated that Airtel Nigeria topped the chart with a 33.43 in the third quarter of 2021, indicating a 17 per cent growth rate from the figures reported in the first half of the year.

The Ookla Market report, which shows the state of Nigeria’s mobile and fixed networks, further showed that the figures show steady, significant growth from the 27.18 it recorded in the first quarter of 2021 and the 28.82-speed score recorded in the second quarter of the same year.

Coming second as the fastest network speed in this report was MTN Nigeria as it recorded a speed score rating of 18.70, 25.87 and 26.15 for the first, second and third quarters respectively.

Other telecom brands in the Nigerian market, Glo and 9mobile recorded speed score ratings as low as 11.72 and 10.21 respectively.

Airtel speed score can be attributed to data consumption by its subscribers. In Q1 2021, its data revenue soared by 26 per cent to hit $152 million, up from $120 million. This data revenue accounted for about 35.4 per cent of total revenue in the year. Average data consumption per user also rose from 1.9 GB per month to 3.2 GB per month.

Likewise, in Q2, data revenue rose by 48.8 per cent to hit $171 million, up from $152 million. This represented the highest growth percentage witnessed by any segment of the telco.

The growth was driven by a 41.5 per cent growth in ARPU for data and supported by a 42.2 per cent increase in data consumption per customer as average data consumption rose to 3.8 GB per month.

Considering that data revenue continues to record impressive growths this shows a lot of Nigerians trust the network for their internet access.

Rating the consistency score, Airtel overtook MTN to become the broadband with the highest consistency score on mobile. The broadband recorded an 89.4 per cent consistency score compared to its closest competitor MTN that had 82.7 per cent.

This is a 7 per cent increase from the previous quarter when Airtel had a consistency score of 82.5 per cent, which was 0.9 per cent lower than MTN’s.