Nigerian telcos see internet speed decline in first quarter of 2022

The internet speed score of all the four major telecom operators in Nigeria declined significantly in the first quarter of 2022.

While Airtel continues to lead the rest of the telcos, its speed score slipped in the first quarter. The telco recorded a speed score of 22.42 Megabits per second (Mbps), at the end of Q1 2022, a 30.9 percentage decline from 35.35 Mbps in Q4 2021, data from Speedtest intelligence showed.

MTN recorded 21.71 Mbps. Globacom recorded 8.70 Mbps, and 9mobile, 8.32 Mbps.

In Q4 2021, while MTN recorded 29.40 Mbps, Globacom and 9mobile recorded 12.66 and 10.52 Mbps respectively.

Also, in measuring the consistency of each operator’s performance, Airtel had the highest Consistency Score on mobile at 85.4 percent, showing at least a 5 Mbps minimum download speed and 1 Mbps minimum upload speed.

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In the case of latency (the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer), Airtel had the lowest latency at 26 milliseconds.

Fixed broadband provider ipNX, a telecoms company licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to provide internet services and other value-added services, had the fastest median download speed among others with a Speed Score of 21.34 and Consistency Score of 45.9 percent.

Kano showed the fastest median mobile download speed among Nigeria’s most populous cities during Q1 2022 at 19.31 Mbps.

On devices, an analysis of performance on some of the fastest phones in Nigeria showed the iPhone 12 Pro 5G was the fastest popular device during Q4 2021, achieving a mean download speed of 47.20 Mbps.