Report: MTN Leads in Network Connectivity as 5G Offers Best Consumer Experience in Download Speed

Emma Okonji

The Q4 2025 Industry Performance Report, released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has rated MTN Nigeria as the clear leader in network connectivity, outperforming other operators in download, upload and latency speeds.

Also, the report said 5G technology offers the best consumer experience with page loading times of between two and three seconds, compared to 2G and 3G technologies that take up to 10 seconds for page loading.

The report, which is the outcome of a study on telecoms industry performance, carried out by Ookla, a global leader in network intelligence and connectivity insights, showed that MTN toped others in network connectivity and stability for modern applications like video calls, video streaming and gaming.

According to the report, several metrics were analysed to find out how they support consumers’ daily digital activities. The report showed that MTN has urban download speed of 24.9 Mbps and a rural download speed of 15.8 Mbps, while T2 has urban download speed of 18.5 Mbps and a rural download speed of 24.9 Mbps. Airtel has urban download speed of 15.9 Mbps and a rural download speed of 10.6 Mbps, while Globacom has urban download speed of 9.5 Mbps and a rural download speed of 9.5 Mbps.

MTN, the report said, averages a speed of 28.6 Megabits per second (Mbps), while Airtel and T2 average less than 20 Mbps in download speed, which supports how quickly telecoms consumers can download large files or apps.

In the area of responsiveness, the report said MTN showed a loaded latency of 787 milliseconds (ms), while Airtel and T2 are under 1,000 ms, as lower latency reduces the delay in completing a task, when telecoms consumers click a link or a message.

For network stability, MTN and T2 maintain jitter levels between 11.2 and 11.6 ms, which helps to prevent ‘freezing’ during live video calls or streaming.

The service highlights from the telecoms operators, showed that MTN operates as a benchmark for infrastructure depth, maintaining high availability and consistent speeds in urban economic hubs like Lagos and Abuja and it remains the leader in 5G video streaming, scoring 63.98 Mbps.

But Airtel offers a balanced profile, frequently serving as a competitive alternative for browsing and streaming in southern and metropolitan states of Nigeria, showing strong uplink of 8.6 Mbps, while T2 focuses on localised capacity, delivering high download peaks in specific markets such as Anambra State with 82.3 Mbps and Oyo State with 80.0 Mbps.

The report said Globacom continues to provide essential baseline connectivity for a wide user base, with specific regional successes in video streaming in areas like Sokoto South.

The report named MTN as the fastest for browsing, scoring 65.9 Mbps, making e-commerce and news reading smoother, followed by T2, which scored 50.0 Mbps and showing strong local performance. While MTN and T2 lead on start times, Airtel and Globacom provide stable urban streaming experiences. The gap between urban and rural video streaming quality is only two per cent, suggesting fairly even basic video access, the report further said.

The report added that urban users currently access connectivity speeds at roughly 22 per cent (35.52 Mbps) faster than those in rural areas (27.67 Mbps).

Based on the industry performance statistics, the NCC therefore advised telecoms consumers to upgrade to 4G/5G technologies by moving away from 3G devices as the single biggest step to improve consumer experience.

The NCC also advised telecoms operators to prioritise their infrastructure investment in the North-east and North-west in order to close the existing 40 per cent performance gap.

“Operators must also optimise for stability (jitter/latency), not just speed, in order to support the growing demand for video calls and gaming. They must also improve on upload speeds currently lagging at between 11 and 12 Mbps, in order to support the creator economy and remote work,” NCC further advised.