MTN controls 55% of Nigeria’s fibre market, but the overall sector remains tiny

MTN Nigeria has emerged as the dominant player in Nigeria’s fibre internet market, but its growing lead masks a bigger problem: fixed broadband remains a tiny part of the country’s internet market.

Data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for June 2026 shows MTN had 176,468 Fibre-To-The-x (FTTx) subscribers, customers connected to the internet through fibre cables that run directly to homes, offices, or buildings. That gave MTN 55.2% of Nigeria’s 319,735 FTTx connections. The operator’s fibre subscriber base has also nearly doubled since January, rising 97.3% from 89,441 to 176,468.

But the size of the overall market puts that growth in perspective.

Nigeria had 156.4 million mobile internet subscribers in June, compared with just 319,735 FTTx subscribers. Taken together, the two categories amount to about 156.8 million internet subscriptions, meaning FTTx accounted for roughly 0.2% of the total.

In other words, MTN may control more than half of Nigeria’s fibre market, but fibre remains a niche technology in how Nigerians get online. Most internet users still rely on mobile networks rather than fixed broadband connections.

That disconnect lies at the core of Nigeria’s broadband challenge. The country has hundreds of terabits of internet capacity landing on its coastline, yet too little fibre carries that bandwidth inland—keeping fast, affordable, and reliable broadband out of reach for millions of Nigerians.

“Fibre connectivity is one of the biggest infrastructure bottlenecks to Nigeria’s digital transformation. If you combine it with affordability, I would say it is the biggest bottleneck,” said Mayowa Okengbele, CEO of PressOne, a cloud telephony company, in an interview with TechCabal.

He argues that Nigeria’s challenge is not a lack of international internet bandwidth. The country already has ample capacity through a network of undersea fibre-optic cables connecting it to the global internet.

Nigeria has eight active subsea fibre-optic cable systems landing on its shores, with a combined design capacity of roughly 370 Tbps—making it one of Africa’s best-connected countries for international internet bandwidth.

“Fundamentally, we don’t have an international bandwidth problem, and most people don’t know that,” Okengbele said.

The bigger challenge is moving that capacity from the coast and major network routes into homes, businesses and communities.

“For Nigeria to climb up its developmental index, every home in every city must be networked by a fibre cable, just like every home is connected to the power grid,” he said.

MTN is pulling ahead

MTN’s position is significantly stronger than that of most competitors.

FibreOne had 56,486 FTTx subscribers in June, putting it a distant second behind MTN. ipNX had 14,698, SwiftNG had 13,195, and Broadband Communication had 10,761. Airtel’s fixed broadband business had fewer than 5,000 subscribers.

MTN’s rapid growth suggests the operator is finding demand for fixed broadband in the areas where its fibre services are available. But industry experts caution against interpreting the increase as evidence that Nigeria’s fibre market has already reached a major turning point.

Mukesh Chandra, a telecom infrastructure expert and former chief technical officer at Globacom, said the total number of fibre subscribers remains small compared with Nigeria’s more than 100 million wireless broadband subscribers.

“I don’t think this is a significant increase in the number of subscribers in the Fibre-to-the-X market,” Chandra said. “We can’t predict fibre network growth in Nigeria just with these numbers of Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) connections.”

Still, he sees the growth as a sign that Nigeria is beginning to move towards fibre-based broadband for end users.

“Yes, it is a sign that Nigeria is now opting for broadband services on FTTH to end users,” he said.

The competitive question now is whether operators can expand fibre networks quickly enough to turn that early demand into a mass market.

Chandra said competition will depend largely on how quickly operators build metro and building-access fibre networks in targeted cities and neighbourhoods.

“Competition on FTTH connections will depend upon how fast both operators will deploy metro and building access fibre rings in targeted regions, cities and areas for fibre coverage,” he said. The economics, however, are difficult.

The fibre problem is bigger than subscriber numbers

Nigeria’s fibre challenge is not simply about connecting the final customer. It involves building the backbone, securing rights-of-way, navigating approvals and spending the capital required to construct networks.

Chandra argues that Nigeria still lacks sufficient fibre redundancy, with many telecom sites relying on microwave links rather than fibre.

“Nigeria does not have significant fibre deployment. It needs to do too much work on this,” he said.

The required investment is substantial, and deployment can take years. Operators also face regulatory approvals and right-of-way costs that vary sharply between states.

Okengbele illustrates the problem with a hypothetical investment.

“If I gave you ₦10 billion today to cable a cross-section of Ibeju-Lekki, where would you start from?” he said.

Having the money and licence, he argued, would be only the beginning. Operators must negotiate right-of-way fees, deal with different state authorities, and navigate the physical realities of laying cable across multiple areas.

“There is as much as 20x variance in the cost across states,” Okengbele said. The result is a market where demand can exist without the infrastructure needed to serve it.

MTN has an infrastructure advantage

MTN is better positioned than many competitors to tackle that problem because it already operates one of Nigeria’s largest telecom infrastructure footprints.

The operator invested ₦620.5 billion ($468.51 million) in capital expenditure in the first half of 2026, excluding leases and right-of-use assets. Including leases under IFRS 16, total capital expenditure reached ₦795.6 billion ($600.72 million).

The spending covers several areas, including spectrum, network coverage, 5G and terrestrial fibre backhaul, rather than fibre-to-the-home connections alone.

MTN’s fibre network also extends well beyond its FTTx customer base. Its national terrestrial fibre network spans more than 43,000 kilometres and links tens of thousands of base stations.

That distinction matters.

A large fibre backbone gives an operator the infrastructure to carry traffic across the country, but it does not automatically mean that homes and businesses are connected to fibre. The final stretch—from the network into a building or home—is often the most difficult and expensive part.

This is why MTN’s 55.2% share of the FTTx market should not be confused with the fact that 55.2% of Nigerians have access to fibre.

The company has an infrastructure advantage, but the country’s fixed broadband network remains underdeveloped.

From mobile-first to fibre-led broadband

For years, Nigeria’s internet growth has been built primarily around mobile networks. That model allowed operators to connect millions of people without running a physical cable to every home.

Fibre changes the economics and the experience.

A fibre connection can provide higher and more consistent speeds than an end-to-end wireless connection, particularly as demand for video, cloud services, remote work, enterprise applications and AI-enabled services increases.

Chandra expects fibre to play an increasingly important role alongside Wi-Fi networks, particularly in residential buildings, enterprises and private networks.

“Next-generation networks for affordable broadband services will be only through Wi-Fi hotspot services, building coverage through Wi-Fi services, and last-mile connectivity from the Wi-Fi access network to end users will be through fibre,” he said.

But expanding that model across Nigeria will require more than individual operators competing for subscribers.

Chandra said the government and regulators need to reduce barriers to deployment, including approval processes and regulatory requirements.

Telecommunications and energy projects often have to navigate a complex web of approvals, from Right-of-Way permits across federal, state, and local authorities to environmental reviews, equipment-type approvals from the Nigerian Communications Commission, aviation clearances, and power-grid connections with DisCos. These processes can take 6 to 18 months to complete, adding high costs and delaying the rollout of fibre, 5G and other infrastructure.

Streamlining these approvals through digital, single-window systems or clearly enforced “deemed approval” timelines could help operators deploy capital faster. Reducing administrative bottlenecks would allow more investment to flow directly into physical infrastructure, including fibre networks, 5G sites and edge-computing facilities. Better coordination among agencies could also reduce roadwork-related fibre cuts, a persistent cause of network outages.

But faster approvals should not come at the expense of oversight. Weakening environmental, structural or construction checks could lead to poorly installed fibre, unsafe towers, damaged roads and uncoordinated power infrastructure. Regulators would also need safeguards to prevent dominant operators from securing infrastructure rights without actually building, effectively shutting smaller competitors out of key corridors.

Chandra also called for greater investment from foreign investors, the government, and network operators, alongside increased local fibre manufacturing, to strengthen Nigeria’s infrastructure supply chain.

For the Nigerian Communications Commission, the challenge is to create a framework that makes large-scale fibre infrastructure deployment easier for both national and international network operators.

MTN’s lead is significant—but so is the gap

MTN’s 55.2% share shows that the company has built a leading position in the market, with its FTTx subscriber base growing 97.3% over six months.

But the broader numbers tell a different story.

With fewer than 320,000 FTTx subscribers against more than 156 million mobile internet subscriptions, Nigeria remains overwhelmingly dependent on wireless connectivity.

That creates both a challenge and an opportunity.

For operators, the opportunity is a largely untapped fixed broadband market. For the government, it is an infrastructure gap that could constrain the quality and reliability of digital services as more economic activity moves online.

MTN may have won the early fibre race. But the much bigger task is still ahead: building enough fibre networks to make fixed broadband a mainstream way for Nigerians to access the internet.

The 55% market share, therefore, says as much about MTN’s lead as it does about the size of the race itself.

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