Telecom sector rebounds with 2m new lines in September, powered by MTN, Airtel surge

Nigeria’s telecommunications market snapped a months-long slump in September, adding more than two million active mobile lines as industry leaders MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa ramped up subscriber onboarding amid easing regulatory pressures and renewed consumer demand for data services.

According to fresh data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), total active subscriptions climbed to 173.5 million by the end of the month, up from 171.6 million in August, a 1.2 percent monthly gain that marks the sector’s strongest growth since regulatory cleanups earlier this year deactivated millions of unverified SIM cards.

The rebound lifted teledensity, the ratio of active lines to the population, to 80.05 percent, based on a projected 216 million Nigerians, while broadband penetration edged higher to 49.34 percent.The surge was spearheaded by MTN Nigeria and Airtel, the duopoly that controls nearly 86 percent of the market.

MTN, Africa’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, boosted its base to 90.3 million lines, capturing 52.12 percent market share after adding hundreds of thousands of users through aggressive 4G promotions and fintech tie-ins.

Airtel followed closely, growing to 58.5 million subscribers (33.74 percent share) on the back of 1.5 million net additions in August alone, extending its momentum into September with tariff tweaks and rural expansion drives.

“After a tough first half marked by NIN-SIM deactivations and forex volatility, September’s numbers signal a return to form for Nigeria’s telcos,” said Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria, in a recent earnings call.

The company reported a stunning turnaround in its third-quarter results last week, swinging to a 750 billion naira ($520 million) profit for the nine months ended September, fueled by 57.5 percent revenue growth to 3.7 trillion naira. Subscriber numbers, while flat year-over-year at 85.4 million in MTN’s official tally (reflecting a more conservative active-user metric), underscored the operator’s dominance as data traffic exploded 36 percent to support average usage of 13.2 gigabytes per user monthly.

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Airtel Africa echoed the optimism in its half-year update, posting a 375 percent year-over-year profit jump to $376 million through September, with Nigeria’s unit driving 9.9 percent customer growth to 53.6 million.

“We are seeing sustained appetite for affordable data bundles and 5G trials in urban centers,” said Sunil Taldar, Airtel Africa’s CEO. The company’s focus on smartphone penetration, which hit 46.8 percent across its African footprint, helped propel data revenue 73 percent higher, even as voice lines stabilized post-regulatory audits.

The September uptick comes after a bruising period for the industry. Earlier in 2025, NCC-mandated SIM-NIN linkages and audits stripped out over 64 million inactive or duplicate lines between March and September 2024, slashing reported subscribers from peaks above 220 million and exposing inflated figures from one major operator.

In August 2025, Nigeria’s teledensity stood at 79.14 percent, reflecting 171.57 million active mobile subscriptions against a projected population of approximately 216.7 million.

By September, the metric rose to 80.05 percent, a 0.91 percentage-point increase, driven by the addition of 1.98 million new lines, pushing total active subscriptions to 173.54 million.

This month-on-month gain, the strongest since early-year regulatory cleanups, signals a clear rebound in subscriber activation following the NIN-SIM compliance purge. While the rise in teledensity appears modest, it is amplified by persistent multi-SIM behavior, with the gap between teledensity (80.05 percent) and unique penetration (49.34 percent) confirming that each connected Nigerian now holds an average of 1.62 active lines, up slightly from August’s implied 1.60.

The increase underscores renewed consumer confidence, aggressive promotional campaigns by MTN and Airtel, and improved network reliability, though it also highlights that growth remains driven more by line duplication than by new user acquisition.

Data consumption, the sector’s real growth engine, registered a slight pullback to 1.147 exabytes (1.147 million terabytes) in September, down 0.4 percent from August’s 1.152 million TB, potentially reflecting seasonal usage patterns or one-off network optimizations amid ongoing 5G rollouts.

Even with the dip, the figure remains near record highs, underscoring Nigerians’ deepening reliance on mobile broadband for streaming, e-commerce, and remote work. 4G connections crossed 50 percent of the market at 51.56 percent, while nascent 5G adoption rose 33 percent year-to-date to 3.37 percent, largely in Lagos and Abuja.

Globacom added modestly to reach 21.4 million lines (12.34 percent share), while T2 clung to 3.1 million subscribers (1.8 percent share),

Economically, the telecom rebound bolsters Nigeria’s digital ambitions. The sector contributed 9.2 percent to gross domestic product in the second quarter, the highest since early 2024—up from 7.5 percent a year prior, supporting fintech booms like MTN’s MoMo (now with 2.9 million active wallets) and enabling 120 million unconnected Nigerians to potentially join via rural expansions.

Challenges persist, including infrastructure gaps in underserved regions and rising capex amid inflation. Yet, with smartphone penetration climbing and AI-driven services on the horizon, analysts forecast another 5 percent to 7 percent subscriber growth in 2026.