Lagos, Abuja, and other major cities in Nigeria have experienced poor quality of telecom service as a result of inadequate capacity across the networks to support heavy usage in high-density urban areas, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has identified.
During the launch of the ‘Public-facing crowdsourcing report and National Coverage Maps, Ali Benchekh, technical account manager at Ookla, stated that, “Nigeria’s network capacity for data services is generally strong, but capacity strain has been observed in major urban areas across all operators.”
He recommends that, “To relieve this strain, the most effective strategy is a multi-faceted approach that aggressively deploys 5G while optimizing existing 4G (LTE) capacity. Additionally, expanding 4G into semi-urban and rural areas is crucial to closing the digital divide.”
Although overall data-network capacity in Nigeria remains ‘good’, the regulator reports that capacity issues have been observed in urban areas across all major operators.
It added that the problem is far less pronounced in rural locations, indicating the challenge is a localised congestion issue rather than a nationwide capacity collapse.
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The NCC’s report, which was conducted with broadband intelligence firm, Ookla reveals that the heavy volume of internet users in cities is causing frequent dropped video calls, buffering when streaming, failed mobile-payments, and slow download speeds.
To address these issues, the NCC has urged telecom operators to invest more heavily in their networks, with two key focus areas identified as aggressive deployment of 5G technology and the optimisation of existing 4G (LTE) networks to deliver better performance to more users in congested areas.
On the subscriber side, complaints continue to mount as users say their 5G routers sometimes yield speeds as low as 1 Mbps, and frequent fibre-cable cuts are also cited by operators as major disruptions.
The NCC reports that the telecom operators are dealing with an average of 1,100 fibre cuts every week.
In response to infrastructure threats, last year, Bola Tinubu signed an official gazette designating telecom infrastructure as ‘critical national information infrastructure’ and making willful destruction of such infrastructure a criminal offence.
Earlier this year, the Federal Ministry of Works and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy formed a joint standing committee to protect fibre-optic cables across Nigeria.
