The business’s positive aspects are on the expense of service high quality and client welfare, contends ELVIS EROMOSELE
In 2025, Nigeria’s telecommunications sector finds itself at a defining second. As soon as celebrated as one of many nation’s most profitable liberalisation tales, the business now sits between resilience and public discontent.
Whereas operators are recording increased revenues and knowledge utilization continues to develop, customers are more and more pissed off by rising prices, inconsistent service high quality and controversial billing practices. The story of Nigeria’s telecom sector in 2025 is due to this fact considered one of positive aspects, pains, and an pressing want for a clearer path ahead.
Regardless of financial headwinds, inflation, naira depreciation and rising operational prices, the telecom business has remained considered one of Nigeria’s most resilient sectors.
Knowledge consumption continues to surge. Even after a major upward evaluation of tariffs in early 2025, Nigerians didn’t scale back their reliance on cellular web. Quite the opposite, knowledge utilization recorded double-digit progress inside months, underlining how deeply connectivity has develop into embedded in each day life, from enterprise and banking to schooling, leisure and social interplay.
Operators additionally benefited financially from the long-overdue tariff adjustment. For greater than a decade, telecom costs remained largely static whereas prices soared. The 2025 tariff improve improved money flows and strengthened the stability sheets of main gamers, enabling them to higher take in foreign exchange pressures and rising power bills. Trade analysts estimate that knowledge companies alone might generate trillions of naira in income this yr.
As well as, Nigeria’s teledensity stays sturdy, and cellular broadband penetration continues to increase, reinforcing telecoms as a essential pillar of the digital economic system and a serious contributor to GDP.
Whereas operators communicate of sustainability, many subscribers really feel the burden has shifted squarely onto them.
The 2025 tariff hike, affecting voice, knowledge and SMS, sparked widespread backlash. For thousands and thousands of Nigerians whose incomes haven’t saved tempo with inflation, the price of staying linked has develop into more and more painful. College students, small companies and low-income earners are notably affected, as connectivity is not a luxurious however a necessity.
Extra troubling for customers is that increased costs haven’t translated into higher service. Complaints about gradual web speeds, frequent community outages, dropped calls, and inconsistent protection stay frequent throughout main networks. In lots of areas, particularly exterior city centres, service high quality stays unreliable.
Infrastructure challenges play a serious position. Frequent fibre cuts, vandalism of base stations, energy shortages and excessive diesel prices proceed to undermine community efficiency. Operators spend billions yearly repairing broken infrastructure, prices that in the end discover their manner again to subscribers.
This disconnect between worth and efficiency has eroded belief. Many customers now query whether or not the business’s positive aspects are coming on the expense of service high quality and client welfare.
One other flashpoint in 2025 has been the controversy surrounding USSD companies, that are broadly used for cellular banking and monetary transactions.
Below a brand new billing mannequin, telecom operators now cost subscribers straight for USSD periods, fairly than billing banks. Whereas the transfer introduced readability and ended years of opaque deductions, it additionally launched new prices for customers, notably those that rely closely on USSD for each day transactions.
For low-income Nigerians and people with out smartphones or cellular apps, USSD stays essentially the most accessible gateway to monetary companies. Even modest per-session costs can rapidly add up, elevating issues about monetary inclusion and affordability.
The USSD debate highlights a recurring theme in Nigeria’s telecom area: reforms that make enterprise sense however threat alienating the very customers the sector is dependent upon.
For Nigeria’s telecom sector to thrive sustainably past 2025, a number of points should be addressed decisively.
First, service high quality should enhance. The Nigerian Communications Fee (NCC) should implement stricter quality-of-service benchmarks and make sure that tariff will increase are matched by measurable community enhancements. The NCC has barked sufficient; it should now present that it may possibly chunk. Shoppers deserve worth for cash.
Second, infrastructure safety must be handled as a nationwide precedence. Telecom property are essential infrastructure and must be safeguarded accordingly. Decreasing vandalism and fibre harm would considerably enhance service reliability and scale back prices.
Third, regulatory and working prices want reform. Excessive right-of-way costs, a number of taxation and inconsistent state-level insurance policies proceed to inflate working bills. Harmonising these prices would ease stress on operators and, in the long term, subscribers.
Fourth, affordability and inclusion should stay central. Focused knowledge plans for college students, small companies and rural communities can assist make sure that increased tariffs don’t deepen the digital divide.
Lastly, client engagement and transparency are key. Clear billing, responsive customer support and sincere communication will go a great distance in rebuilding belief between operators and subscribers.
In 2025, Nigeria’s telecom sector stands sturdy however strained. It’s worthwhile, indispensable and deeply woven into the material of nationwide life, but more and more criticised by the individuals it serves.
The problem forward isn’t just progress, however balanced progress, one which aligns industrial sustainability with service high quality, affordability and inclusion. If regulators and operators get this stability proper, telecoms will stay a robust engine of Nigeria’s digital future. If not, public frustration might proceed to overshadow the sector’s plain positive aspects.
Eromosele, a company communications professional and sustainability advocate, wrote through: elviseroms@gmail.com
