All The ISPs In Nigeria Have A Poor Total Of 308,000 Subscribers

There are few things that indicate how terribly low the Internet usage of people resident in Nigeria is than looking at the ISP subscriber numbers. ISPs in Nigeria are not doing well. Some of these Internet service providers are wireless operators, while some are wired (fibre optic cable). But all of them are struggling.

As a matter of fact, if you were around in the days of the CDMA operators who preceded the GSM operators, you can draw similarities between Nigerian ISPs and those now defunct CDMA operators. The similarities include: limited coverage, high costs, and low subscriber numbers. Well, and eventually extinction. Many of the registered ISPs in Nigeria are dead already. Let’s look at the top ones.

The largest ISP in Nigeria is Spectranet, which has 105,000 subscribers. It started operations in 2013 and has wireless operations.

The second largest ISP in Nigeria is SpaceX’s Starlink, with 65,000 subscribers. Starlink Nigeria commenced operations only in early 2023. The fact that the nature of its service does not require any physical rollout in the country is its strongest point. And this is what has helped it leap over hundreds of others to take the 2nd spot. But it is also extremely expensive compared to the others, and this is a factor that will limit its adoption.

A service that requires an upfront ₦500,000 in equipment and ₦38,000 to ₦75,000 as monthly subscription is not going to revolutionise the Internet connectivity space in a country where many millions earn less than ₦100,000 per month.

The ISP in the number 3 spot is FiberOne, a cable operator with 33,000 subscribers. Hopefully, you are noticing the massive drops in numbers as we look down the ladder. Starlink has about half of Spectranet’s subscribers, and FiberOne has about half of Starlink’s subscribers.

If we look further down, our eyes will spot Tizeti in 4th place with about 18,000 – about half of FiberOne’s numbers. It is bad enough that all the ISPs in Nigeria combined cannot boast of a total of half a million subscribers. It is even worse when you look at the numbers.

let’s look at a few more popular names; shall we? iPNX, established in 2002, has about 16,000 subscribers till date. CyberSpace, another veteran, has 3,900 subscribers, and Galaxy Backbone a mere 2,000.

ISPs in Nigeria vs Mobile Operators in Nigeria

To give you a bigger context, the four big telecom operators – MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile – together have a whopping 141.6 million internet subscribers. Again, the figures that ISPs have reminds me of the shape of the CDMA operators before they went out of business. Many ISPs are already dead.

In November 2024, MTN Nigeria said that the average user on its network consumed 11GB of data. That is the average: most subscribers consume much less than that, while a few privileged consume much more.

As an aside, but an important point to note, there is also the angle that almost every subscriber to an ISP also has an active data plan from one or more of the four mobile operators. The mobile operators are the essential, primary providers of Internet connectivity in Nigeria. It is their reach that traditional ISPs in the country must aspire for.

Disposable income of the majority of Nigerians resident in Nigeria must not just increase but multiply for the current dynamics to change. The pattern is that as soon as an individual can afford an ISP, they jump in to enjoy the benefits which usually include unlimited data and a more stable connection.

But disposable income is not the only factor, though it is a massive one. Deployment is another. There are individuals who live in locations that do not have the presence of an ISP but who can afford the service. State governments must continue to make it easier and more affordable for ISPs to connect new neighbourhoods for service provision.

How are you getting by with Internet service? Do you use an ISP or depend 100% on one of the big four mobile operators? How much do you spend on data each month? Let’s discuss in the comments section below.

References

All figures used in this article are from the NCC’ s statistics. Source.