Nigeria’s Internet Consumption Surpasses 1 Million Terabytes for the First Time

Nigeria’s internet usage has reached an unprecedented milestone, surpassing 1 million terabytes for the first time in January 2025. This marks a significant achievement since the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) began tracking data consumption in January 2023, highlighting the nation’s growing dependence on digital connectivity and increasing demand for internet services.

However, despite hitting this record, data consumption in January 2025 stood at 27,475 terabytes—representing a sharp decline from the 94,502 terabytes recorded in December 2024.

Terabytes (TB) serve as a standard unit for measuring internet consumption, indicating the volume of data transmitted or received over a network. One terabyte is equivalent to 1,000 gigabytes (GB) or 1,000,000 megabytes (MB), a metric commonly used by telecom providers to monitor high data usage among businesses, streamers, and gamers.

The drop in monthly data usage may pose challenges for telecom operators such as MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria, both of which recently increased data tariffs by 50%. Higher costs could deter users from consuming as much data as before, potentially affecting revenue growth in the sector.

Despite the decline in data usage, MTN and Airtel continued to expand their internet subscriber base in January 2025. MTN led the market with 1.4 million new users, bringing its total internet subscribers to 73.7 million. Airtel closely followed, adding 1.08 million new subscribers to reach a total of 48.4 million.

Meanwhile, Globacom continues to face challenges following a regulatory audit in April 2024 that significantly impacted its subscriber count. The network added only 313,939 users in January 2025, while 9mobile failed to record any new subscribers during the same period.