Nigeria’s digital economy is expanding at a pace few would have predicted a decade ago. Mobile banking, online commerce, video streaming, remote work, and digital content creation have become part of everyday life for millions. But for many Nigerians, the experience of going online still depends heavily on where they live and the network they can access. Even as internet speeds improve nationally, access to quality digital experiences remains deeply uneven.
New data from the Nigerian Communications Commission’s Fourth Quarter 2025 report, produced in partnership with Ookla, a global leader in network intelligence and performance measurement, shows that Nigeria’s digital journey is advancing, but the benefits are not being felt evenly across the country.
At a national level, Nigeria’s digital landscape is defined by transition. High-speed technologies such as 5G are expanding, particularly in major cities, but the lived internet experience for most Nigerians is still shaped by the consistency of 4G networks and the continued presence of 2G and 3G in many rural areas. This uneven mix of technologies, rather than consumer demand or usage patterns, increasingly determines who benefits fully from the digital economy and who remains constrained by it.
The report makes clear that digital experience is no longer just about being connected. It is about how well that connection performs in real-life situations. For users on 5G networks, page load times average between two and three seconds. On older 2G and 3G technologies, load times often exceed ten seconds. That difference may appear technical, but in practice it defines productivity, convenience, and opportunity.
Nowhere is this disparity more visible than in the geographic split between urban and rural Nigeria. According to the NCC–Ookla analysis, urban centres such as Lagos and Abuja outperform rural areas by approximately 22 percent in average download speeds. Urban users record average speeds of 35.52 Mbps, compared to 27.67 Mbps in rural local government areas. While both figures suggest basic connectivity, the performance gap widens when stability and responsiveness are considered.
According to the NCC–Ookla report, digital experience for modern applications such as video calls, online learning, gaming, and real-time financial transactions depends as much on network stability as on raw download speeds. Metrics such as latency and jitter, the report notes, play a critical role in determining how responsive and reliable internet connections feel to users. High latency introduces delays when users click links or send messages, while elevated jitter leads to freezing and interruptions during live video or streaming sessions. These performance gaps directly affect how reliably Nigerians can work remotely, attend virtual classes, or participate in the creator economy.
A technical breakdown of the findings shows that Nigeria’s operators contribute differently to this evolving ecosystem, reflecting varied strategic focuses rather than uniform performance gaps. MTN, for instance, emerges as a benchmark for infrastructure depth, particularly in urban economic hubs. With an average download speed of 28.6 Mbps and a loaded latency of 787 milliseconds, the operator delivers relatively responsive and stable experiences in areas with dense economic activity. It also leads in 5G deployment and video streaming performance, recording a video streaming score of 63.98.
Airtel presents a more balanced national profile, frequently serving as a competitive alternative for browsing and streaming, especially in southern and metropolitan states. Its strength in uplink performance, averaging 8.6 Mbps, is particularly relevant for users who upload content, engage in video calls, or rely on cloud-based work tools.
T2, meanwhile, illustrates the impact of localised capacity investment. While its national averages may not always lead the market, it delivers exceptionally high download peaks in specific states such as Anambra and Oyo, where speeds exceed 80 Mbps. These pockets of performance highlight how targeted infrastructure deployment can dramatically improve user experience within limited geographies.
Glo continues to play a foundational role in the market, providing baseline connectivity for a wide user base. The report notes regional successes in video streaming performance, including in areas such as Sokoto South, underscoring that meaningful digital access is not limited exclusively to the country’s largest cities.
When the data is examined through the lens of everyday usage, the story becomes even more revealing. MTN ranks highest in web browsing performance, with a browsing score of 65.9, enabling smoother access to e-commerce platforms, news sites, and digital services. T2 follows with a score of 50.0, driven largely by strong localised performance. In video streaming, competition is more evenly matched.
While MTN and T2 lead on faster start times, Airtel and Glo deliver stable urban streaming experiences. Notably, the quality gap between urban and rural video streaming is relatively narrow, at just two percent, suggesting that basic video access has become more evenly distributed than other aspects of digital performance.
Nevertheless, this apparent progress masks a deeper structural imbalance. While streaming a video may be possible in many locations, participating fully in Nigeria’s digital economy requires more than passive consumption. Upload speeds remain limited, averaging between 11 and 12 Mbps across operators according to the report. This constraint directly affects remote workers, online entrepreneurs, educators, and content creators, for whom uploading files, hosting live sessions, or collaborating in real time is essential.
The NCC–Ookla report underscores that closing Nigeria’s digital divide is no longer primarily about expanding coverage. It is about improving quality. In parts of the country with historically lower network density and higher infrastructure deployment challenges, performance gaps of up to 40 percent persist. These gaps reflect not just geography, but long-standing investment patterns and economic realities.
For consumers, the report delivers a clear message. Upgrading from 3G devices to 4G or 5G is the single most impactful step toward a better digital experience. The difference between waiting ten seconds for a page to load and seeing it appear almost instantly shapes how people perceive and use the internet. However, device upgrades alone cannot solve systemic disparities.
For the industry, the findings point to a more complex set of priorities. Operators are increasingly challenged to optimise for latency and stability, not just headline download speeds. As demand for video calls, online collaboration, and interactive digital services grows, network reliability becomes a competitive differentiator. At the same time, improving upload capacity and creating more symmetrical networks will be critical to supporting Nigeria’s expanding creator economy and remote workforce.
Nigeria’s internet is undoubtedly faster than it was a few years ago. The expansion of 4G, the gradual rollout of 5G, and ongoing infrastructure investment all point to progress. But the benefits of that progress are distributed unevenly. Where a Nigerian lives, and the technology available in that location, still plays a decisive role in shaping their digital opportunities.
As policymakers, operators, and investors look toward the next phase of Nigeria’s digital development, the challenge is no longer simply connecting more people. It is ensuring that connection quality is good enough, stable enough, and inclusive enough to support a truly national digital economy. Until that happens, analysts note that Nigeria’s internet may continue to get faster, but it will remain far from fair.
