Nigeria’s mobile data usage surges past 1.1m terabytes in July

…Nigeria’s mobile data consumption climbed to 1,131,255.90 terabytes in July 2025, up from 1,044,073.08 terabytes in June, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reported, underscoring the nation’s surging appetite for internet services

Nigeria’s mobile data consumption climbed to 1,131,255.90 terabytes in July 2025, up from 1,044,073.08 terabytes in June, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reported, underscoring the nation’s surging appetite for internet services.

Technology Times review of the telecoms regulator’s statistics shows that the 8.3% month-on-month increase reflects continued growth in internet usage across Africa’s most populous nation, which has over 200 million inhabitants.

Nigeria recorded 169,328,686 total telecommunications subscribers in July, down from 171,730,064 in June. Teledensity stood at 78.11% in July compared to 79.22% the previous month.

Internet subscribers totaled 144,104,264 in July, comprising 138,220,051 mobile GSM subscribers and smaller numbers using fixed wired, ISP and VoIP services.

Nigeria’s monthly internet consumption of 1,131,255.90 terabytes in July translates to staggering rise in digital activities across the connected population. Put differently, the figure equals about 1.13 billion gigabytes of data used within 30 days.

Nigerians gulped over 1.13 billion gigabytes of mobile data in 30 days

Broadband penetration reached 48.01 percent in July with 104,068,105 subscriptions, down slightly from 48.78 percent in June when subscriptions were 105,749,786.

MTN maintained the largest market share among GSM operators at 52.70% with 89,137,003 subscribers, followed by Airtel at 33.42% with 56,523,790 subscribers. Globacom held 12.26% market share with 20,741,354 subscribers, while 9mobile had 1.61% with 2,727,594 subscribers.

Fourth-generation (4G) technology accounted for 50.85% of mobile subscriptions in July, while 2G represented 38.60%. Third-generation (3G) services comprised 7.38% and 5G held 3.17% of the market, according to the NCC fibures.

The telecommunications sector contributed 14.40% to Nigeria’s gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the latest available data.

Data usage has shown steady growth throughout 2025, rising from 517,670.15 terabytes in January 2023 to over 1.1 million terabytes in recent months.

Nigeria’s monthly internet consumption of 1,131,255.90 terabytes in July translates to staggering rise in digital activities across the connected population. Put differently, the figure equals about 1.13 billion gigabytes of data used within 30 days.

To illustrate, that volume of data is the equivalent of streaming roughly 377 million high-definition movies, or more than 43,000 years of continuous YouTube videos at 1080p quality. In the music world, it would amount to about 226 trillion songs streamed on platforms like Spotify.

On social media, the same volume could support nearly 38 billion one-minute TikTok videos or around 1.13 quadrillion WhatsApp text messages which is enough for every person on Earth to send more than 140,000 messages each.

For Nigeria’s population of about 230 million, July’s internet traffic works out to each person consuming the equivalent of more than 1.6 HD movies within the month,

The surge in data consumption is supported by infrastructure improvements, including Nigeria’s Internet Exchange Point (IXPN) reaching one terabit per second in domestic traffic in April making it the second African exchange point to achieve this milestone after South Africa’s NAPAfrica.

Muhammed Rudman, chief executive of IXPN, at the time explained that video streaming is the primary driver of traffic growth, with platforms including Facebook, TikTok and Netflix accounting for most content consumption. He attributed the surge to improved video quality, from “CD to DVD to 4K and now 12K quality videos.”

COURTESY: technologytimes