Customers of the big four telecom operators in the country spent about N9 trillion on airtime for their voice calls and data in 2025, pushing up telecom operators’ revenue in the last financial year.

MTN Nigeria got about N5.3 trillion in total revenue from their N90.3 million customers’ airtime purchase for the year ended December 31, 2025. This pushed them back to record a profit after tax of N1.11 trillion.

Airtel Nigeria earned about N3.1trn in revenue from airtime sales from their 60.9m customers with data revenue marking rapid growth as smartphone adoption and internet penetration continue to rise across its network.

Though Globacom and T2/9mobile have not been publishing their detailed public financials, industry analysts and analysis done by this reporter estimated their combined revenue from airtime to be close to N2trn for 2025. Globacom has about 22.3m customers and T2 mobile has 3.3m customers.

The increase in airtime earnings was due to sharp rise in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) recorded by the operators, according to some of their financial results and data by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

ARPU, a key telecom industry metric, measures the average amount each subscriber spends monthly on telecom services such as voice, data and digital products.

Daily Trust learnt that the rise in consumers’ spending was also driven by the combined impact of tariff adjustments and rising data consumption.

The full-year financial results released by MTN Nigeria showed that monthly ARPU rose to $3.60 in 2025 from $2.17 in 2024. If this is converted into the local currency, Naira, the company’s ARPU increased to N5,184.01 from N3,542.00.

This means that each customer on the network was spending an average of N5,184.01 per month in 2025.

This pushed the company’s revenue for the year to N5.2 trillion, a 55.1% increase when compared with the N3.3 trillion it recorded in 2024.

MTN disclosed that the number of active data subscribers grew by 11.6%, while smartphone penetration increased by 7.9 percentage points to 66.1%.

The company also recorded a 34% increase in data traffic, while average usage per subscriber rose by 20% to 13.1GB monthly, all of which boosted its ARPU.

In addition, MTN expanded its 4G population coverage by 2.1 percentage points to 84.6%, driven by accelerated investments in network infrastructure and service quality improvements.

As for Airtel Nigeria, monthly ARPU climbed to $2.4 in 2025 (full financial year ended March 31, 2026) from $1.7 in 2024.

In naira terms, the figure increased to N3,326.4 from N2,599.3. Despite the increase, an average customer on Airtel spends less monthly compared with MTN.

Airtel reported that its revenue grew by 47.4% in constant currency, largely driven by continued strength in the demand for data services and supported by tariff adjustments.

“In reported currency, revenue grew by 52.8% to $1,598m with Q4’26 revenue growth at 54.7% (40.2% in constant currency).

“The constant currency revenue growth was driven by ARPU growth of 36.7% and customer base growth of 9.4%,” the company stated.

The company’s data revenue increased by 63.6%, supported by growth in both data customers and data ARPU.

Airtel said data customer growth stood at 8.1%, while data ARPU expanded by 49.2% during the year.

Airtel Nigeria also recorded a significant rise in internet consumption, with average data usage per customer increasing by 30.8% to 11GB monthly from 8.4GB recorded in the previous year.

The increase in customer spending followed the implementation of the 50% telecom tariff adjustment approved by the NCC early last year, which raised the prices of voice calls, SMS and data bundles across the industry.

With the increment, the cost of an SMS, which stood at N4.00 for several years, was increased to N6.00, while voice call and data tariffs were also increased accordingly.

But the growing data consumption among Nigerians was identified as a major factor in lifting telecom revenues and subscriber spending.

According to the NCC, data consumption in Nigeria has been growing at an unprecedented level between last year and this year.

The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, disclosed recently that Nigerians are now consuming about 45,800 terabytes of data every day, reflecting the country’s rapidly growing dependence on internet services and digital platforms.

Maida said the daily consumption brought total consumed data in March 2026 to 1.42 million, compared with 995,000 terabytes recorded within the corresponding period of 2025.

However, the NCC boss said the increase in data usage by Nigerians is also putting a strain on the telecom networks, a development that has led to the poor service quality experienced by subscribers in some places recently.

But the NCC said the operators are responding to this challenge by increasing their investments in network capacity expansion. He also said the federal government is actively making efforts to stabilise the network quality.

According to the telecom regulator, the network operators have committed to upgrading 12,000 sites this year to improve service quality across the country.

Maida said Nigeria is firmly on the path of digital transformation, listing the rapid growth of digital payments, ecommerce platforms, startups, digital literacy, and the adoption of emerging technologies as the immense potential of the country’s digital economy.

He said the data usage in the telecom space tells a compelling story: Nigerians are consuming data at unprecedented levels.

“In March 2026 alone, Nigerians consumed over 1.42 million terabytes of data, up from 995 thousand terabytes as of March 2025—that is about 45,800 terabytes every day. Put another way, this is roughly equivalent to Nigerians watching over 15 million hours of high-definition video every single day.

“By comparison, in March last year, daily data use was about 32,100 terabytes, equivalent to roughly 10.7 million hours of HD video per day. This means Nigerians are now using the equivalent of about 4.6 million more hours of HD video every day than they did a year ago”, he said.

What experts are saying

Experts have attributed the N9 trillion telecom operators’ customers spending on airtime to a combination of rising data consumption, increase in smartphone usage adoption, and upward review of telecom tariff.

A public analyst, Musa Lekan Alebiosu, noted that the revenue surge is predominantly powered by mobile broadband.

He said traditional voice calls are yielding to digital services like video streaming and fintech usage. He added that these require telecom operators to constantly upgrade their Mobile GSM-VoIP Operator Infrastructure to meet capacity demands.

But while telcos have reported record-breaking revenue, Nigerian consumers have lamented that the huge expenditures they make on airtime have not translated to better service quality.

The president of National Telecommunications Subscribers of Nigeria (NATCOMS), Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo said operators should use the earnings they rake from airtime sales to improve their networks.

Other analysts and consumer groups also observed that while operators recorded a boom in profits, the underlying infrastructure has remained strained. And they said despite telecom operators heavy investment, subscribers still complain about poor Quality of Service (QoS).