Nigeria’s internet consumption surpassed 1 million terabytes for the first time in January 2025. This just shows the country’s growing reliance on digital connectivity. However, data consumption for the month totalled 27,475 terabytes, a sharp drop from the 94,502 terabytes recorded in December 2024.
Terabytes (TB) measure internet usage, reflecting the volume of data transmitted or received over a network. One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes (GB) or 1,000,000 megabytes (MB), a scale often used by telecom providers to track high data consumption.
The drop in monthly data usage may pose challenges for telecom operators like MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria, which recently raised data tariffs by 50%. Higher costs could reduce user consumption and impact revenue growth.
Despite this, MTN and Airtel saw significant internet subscriber growth in January 2025. MTN added 1.4 million new users, bringing its total subscriber base to 73.7 million. Airtel gained 1.08 million subscribers, reaching 48.4 million users.
Conversely, Globacom continues to struggle after a regulatory audit in April 2024 led to a major subscriber reduction. It added only 313,939 users in January 2025, while 9mobile failed to gain any new subscribers.
