Lebara launches Nigeria’s second commercial mobile virtual network

Lebara Nigeria, the local subsidiary of London-based mobile virtual network operator Lebara Group, has begun commercial operations, becoming the newest player in the country’s crowded mobile market.

Lebara is entering a market dominated by MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, Globacom and 9mobile, which own the networks and distribution infrastructure that connect most Nigerians. Unlike those operators, Lebara will sell mobile services over Airtel Nigeria’s network while focusing its investment on digital products, customer experience and services.

The launch makes Lebara the second MVNO to begin commercial service under Nigeria’s 2022 regulatory framework, after Vitel Wireless launched in October 2025. It is also Lebara Group’s first entry into Africa.

Lebara holds a Tier 5 MVNO licence issued by the Nigerian Communications Commission in 2023 and has partnered with Airtel Nigeria as its host network. The company confirmed the partnership at a soft launch in Lagos on February 25, co-hosted with the United Kingdom’s Department for Business and Trade.

The company said it has begun activating customers who reserved personalised mobile numbers under its 0724 prefix during a pre-launch registration period. Customers can claim those numbers through the My LebaraNG app or at Slot stores, the electronics retailer.

“We are not entering the market believing that the answer is simply to compete on price,” Mary Akin-Adesokan, Fasheitan, chief operating officer, told TechCabal in an interview on Monday. “Our ambition is to compete across value, customer experience and digital convenience, while remaining competitively priced.”

The company is offering both physical SIM cards and eSIMs, with remote Know Your Customer verification through its app. The process, described by the company as “Scan, Snap and Connect,” is designed to let users register and activate a line without visiting a telecom shop.

The digital-registration model is central to Lebara’s effort to establish itself as a more software-led alternative in a market where customers have traditionally relied heavily on agents, street vendors and physical service centres for SIM registration, replacement, account changes and customer support. But the approach also faces a practical test: Nigeria’s market includes consumers with varying levels of smartphone access, digital literacy and confidence in completing identity-verification processes online.

Lebara says it is targeting customers based less on age than behaviour, with young professionals, students, entrepreneurs and other digitally active consumers expected to be among its early users.

“Nigeria’s digital generation is extremely important to our strategy, but we don’t see our audience simply through the lens of age,” Fasheitan said. “We see it through behaviour. We are building for people who want telecommunications to be simple, fast, accessible and increasingly digital.”

Beyond voice and data bundles, Lebara plans to sell cloud storage through Sabi Cloud, travel eSIMs, entertainment through LebaraPlay and business services. It also plans to offer Buy Now, Pay Later options for eligible devices and financial services through partnerships.

The commercial appeal of such services will depend on their pricing, availability and execution. Nigeria’s largest operators have steadily expanded beyond basic connectivity, offering mobile money, content, cloud, enterprise and financial products alongside traditional telecom services. MTN Nigeria has built a broad digital-services and fintech operation, while Airtel, Globacom and 9mobile also compete through data packages, consumer promotions, enterprise products and distribution reach.

Lebara argues that an MVNO does not need to reproduce every part of the conventional telecom model to compete. Instead, it can focus on customer-facing services, product design and digital experience while relying on a host operator for radio access infrastructure.

“Being an MVNO does not mean simply putting a brand on somebody else’s network,” Fasheitan said. “As a Tier 5 MVNO, Lebara Nigeria has the flexibility to operate across significant parts of that value chain.”

The company acknowledged that the radio network—the towers, spectrum and other infrastructure that determine basic coverage and signal availability—remains the responsibility of the underlying infrastructure provider. But it said it controls its core network and other customer-facing systems, giving it the ability to shape activation, billing, account management, service delivery and support.

“For us, reliability goes beyond signal strength,” Fasheitan said. “It is about building trust by ensuring customers can connect seamlessly, activate their services easily, manage their accounts conveniently and access support whenever they need it.”

Lebara is seeking customers in a market where network performance remains a decisive factor. An MVNO may improve service design and customer support, but customers will still experience the coverage, congestion, and service interruptions associated with the host network in their location.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) sets quality-of-service requirements for operators, but local conditions shape consumer perceptions of reliability, including network availability, power supply, fibre disruptions, site outages, and geographic coverage.

The NCC introduced its five-tier MVNO framework in August 2022, creating a formal route for companies to sell mobile services without building nationwide mobile radio networks.

But a licence is only the beginning. New operators must still secure host-network relationships, establish billing and customer-care platforms, obtain numbering resources, meet regulatory requirements, build distribution, finance customer acquisition and persuade consumers to try a new brand in a market where incumbent operators have decades of presence.

Of the 46 MVNO licences issued by the NCC across the five categories, only Vitel Wireless and Lebara Nigeria have so far launched commercially.

Lebara said it won’t only measure success over the next one to two years by raw subscriber numbers. The company said it was focused on building what it described as a sustainable customer business, as well as a distribution and digital ecosystem that makes its services easy to find, purchase and activate.

“We don’t believe that responsible growth means simply spending aggressively from day one,” Fasheitan said. “Our approach is to build, learn, optimise and scale.”

Lebara Group was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in London. It operates as an MVNO in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, France and Denmark, and has licenced its brand in Spain, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and Australia. The group says it serves more than four million customers globally.

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