Nigerian Telcos Add 3.39 million Customers as Internet Users Drop in Q1 2025

By Adedapo Adesanya

Telecommunications operators in Nigeria added about 3.39 million telephone lines in the first quarter of 2025, pushing active users to 172.7 million, amounting to 79.67 per cent teledensity, according to the latest data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on Tuesday.

The industry regulator also said the number of active telephone users moved from 169.3 million as of January to 172.7 million by March ending.

The latest data showed that 4G technology remained most dominant in the country with 48.82 per cent penetration, followed by 2G at 40 per cent and 3G at 8.40 per cent.

The Fifth Generation (5G) offered by MTN, Mafab and Airtel leaped slightly by 0.16 per cent from 2.54 per cent as of the beginning of the year to 2.70 per cent by the end of March.

The 2.70 per cent means that of the 172.7 million active telephone users in the country, 4.66 million are using the 5G network.

Further analysis, however, showed a drop in the number of Internet users in the country. As of January, it was 142, 161,409 but dropped to 142,053, 537. But Broadband penetration rose to 47.73 per cent from 45.61 per cent. Interestingly, there are now 103.5 million broadband users in the country.

In terms of market dominance, MTN maintained the lead with 90 million users and 52. 4 per cent market reach. Airtel is second with 58.3 million customers and 33.8 per cent reach. Globacom came third with 12 per cent penetration and 20.7 million subscribers. 9mobile is fourth with 1.72 per cent nationwide penetration and 2.96 million customers.

This development comes amid rising complaint of worsening service offering by telcos in the past few days.

So far, only MTN has apologised for service glitch experienced by some subscribers yesterday.

Business Post reports that some MTN subscribers across Nigeria experienced a lengthy network downtime on Tuesday disrupting flow of work and communication.

As a result of the glitch, many users on the network were unable to access the internet and many social networking apps, except WhatsApp.

Speaking to this newspaper, a person identified as Albert Adeoye, said, “MTN really affected me yesterday. I heard people complaining but I didn’t know it was that bad.”