MTN and Airtel, Nigeria’s two major mobile network carriers, collected N403.2 billion from data services in the third quarter of 2023, as Nigerian data usage soared.
MTN, Nigeria’s largest telecom provider by subscriber number, reported N279.5 billion in data income between July and September of this year.
This represents a 38.9% increase over the N201.1 billion recorded during the same period last year.
Airtel Nigeria earned N123.7 billion ($157 million) from data subscriptions, according to Airtel Africa’s financial results for the quarter ending September 2023. This also represents a 29.3% increase in the company’s data revenue.
Increased data consumption
Both MTN and Airtel acknowledged that the data revenue growth was driven by the increase in data consumption by their customers.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of MTN, Karl Toriola, the increase in data usage was supported by the revamp of MTN data bundle offerings, an increase in the penetration of smartphones, and investments in its network to expand coverage and capacity and enhance customer experience.
“Our 4G network now covers 80.5% of the population, up from 79.1% in December 2022. Data usage (GB per user) grew by 29.1% to 8.6GB, and the number of smartphones on our network increased by 7.6%, bringing smartphone penetration to 53.4%, up 1. Consequently, we recorded a 46.3% growth in data traffic, with the 4G network accounting for 83.7% of the total traffic,” Toriola stated.
On his part, the CEO of Airtel Africa, Segun Ogunsanya, also noted that Airtel Nigeria recorded a significant increase in data consumption during the review period.
“Airtel Nigeria’s data revenue grew by 29.3% in constant currency, driven by data customer base growth of 17.4% and data Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) growth of 12.3%. Data usage per customer increased by 23.8% to 5.9GB per month (from 4.8GB in the prior period).
“Our continued 4G network rollout has resulted in nearly 100% of all our sites delivering 4G services. Furthermore, 233 5G sites are now operational. For the Q2’24 period, 4G customers accounted for 51.1% of our total data customer base and contributed to 85.3% of total data usage. Q2’24 4G data usage per customer reached 11.7 GB per month, an increase of 41.3% (from 8.3 GB per customer per month in Q2’23),” he said.
Earlier, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed that internet users in Nigeria consumed 655,879.86 terabytes of data in August this year.
According to data supplied by the telecom authority, the quantity of data utilized in the country has been steadily increasing.
When compared to the previous month, August use increased by 6.6% to 615,207.39 terabytes.
Meanwhile, in the same month, internet subscriptions in the country fell, indicating that current users increased their online usage.
Internet subscriptions across mobile, landline, and VoIP networks fell to 159 million in August, down from 159.5 million in July 2023.
