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Despite boasting of over 170 million subscriber base, there has been a very low penetration of 5G ser­vices across Nigeria as many 5G phones in Nige­ria have no 5G network to connect to.

Latest data released by the telecom industry reg­ulator, the Nigerian Com­munications Commission (NCC) showed that since its commercial launch in the country, only 5 million active mobile users repre­senting about 3% currently use 5G services.

While the country has been making progress de­ploying next-generation networks, the gap between access and adoption re­mains a reality of great concern.

Almost five years after the 5G network’s discourse in Nigeria, the excitement expected from the innova­tive technology which has the potential to change ev­erything seems to be wan­ing due to slow deployment and unavailability of ser­vice for connection by us­ers of 5G devices.

When the first commer­cial launch of 5G by MTN kicked off in September 2022, the number of the new technology’s sub­scribers in Nigeria reached 60,000 within five months.

As at May, 2023, MTN covered 13 cities in the country. Of these cities, the coverage was quite limited and still remains so today.

The second 5G licensee, MAFAB Communications, which launched its ser­vices in Lagos 13 months after obtaining its licence has been silent without meaningful contribution to complement the efforts of MTN and Airtel opera­tions.

Airtel kicked off its fifth generation (5G) network mmm in June 2023 and reg­istered its presence in four states—Lagos, Ogun, Abuja and Rivers states.

The slow pace of the deployment of 5G service is quite unexciting when compared to the pre-launch period.

There are of course, some factors that will con­tinue to inhibit the deploy­ment adoption of 5G in Nigeria.

Before now, it was gen­erally believed that the adoption of 5G technology would be supported by the increased availability of 5G smartphones and devic­es which is a concern with many Nigerians because of the cost of 5G-compatible devices and phones.

It was also posited that the deployment of 5G tech­nology is determined by the availability and afford­ability of 5G devices which are currently limited.

The coverage of optic fiber cable in Nigeria is not also encouraging espe­cially in cities where 5G is expected to be initially de­ployed. This poor penetra­tion of fiber optics is even worse in most suburban and rural areas.

According to the Nigeri­an Communications Com­mission (NCC) report re­leased in 2018, metropolitan cities need over 120,000km of fiber networks for the country’s backhaul inter­connectivity. The stated required distance cover­age was even before the 5G technology crusade came to being.

Perhaps, the poor fibre infrastructure is one of the reasons why the licensed network operators are still selective of the areas and cities they are covering.

But according to a recent report conducted by Ookla and NCC, ownership of 5G phones in Nigeria is great­ly outpacing coverage, leav­ing many users unconnect­ed to 5G.

The “Nigeria Network Performance & 5G Oppor­tunity Analysis” report released recently, found that 70.9% of 5G-capable devices in Lagos are un­able to connect to any 5G network, while the same goes for 65.6% of 5G devic­es in Abuja.

According to the NCC, the results highlight “sig­nificant disparities in net­work experience across the country,” even in urban areas. That said, the gap is even more pronounced be­tween urban areas where 5G is being deployed and rural areas that remain stuck with 2G and 3G net­works.

“This imbalance con­tinues to limit digital inclusion and economic opportunity outside the major cities,” the NCC re­port said.

The NCC pledged to ac­celerate 5G deployment in urban areas, as well as 4G and 5G expansion into underserved rural regions. The regulator also advised telcos to focus investment on improving latency and reducing jitter across all networks “to ensure a high-quality experience for real-time applications.”

Among other findings, the NCC/Ookla report named the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Lagos as the top-performing re­gions, with network perfor­mance 40-50% better than the national average.

The report also ranked MTN Nigeria as the top performance leader, consis­tently delivering the high­est download and upload speeds with strong latency and jitter metrics. Airtel Nigeria followed closely in download performance but still struggles with latency – in fact, its 4G network performs better than its 5G network, the report said.

Meanwhile, Glo and T2 Mobile (formerly 9mo­bile) are lagging behind in terms of performance and network stability, with T2 scoring especially poorly in latency and jitter problems.

However, the low pace of deployment and adoption is not peculiar to Nigeria alone, but for the whole continent of Africa.

According to a new re­port from the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Ed­ucational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), only 1.2 percent of Africans currently have access to 5G networks compared with a global average of more than 20 percent, a sign that the continent re­mains at an early stage in accessing next-generation mobile technology.

The State of Broadband in Africa 2025 report says that while Africa has made strong progress in mobile connectivity, the newest wireless technology (5G) remains largely out of reach for the continent’s 1.24 billion inhabitants.

However, industry pro­jections suggest this could change dramatically over the next decade, with 5G ex­pected to reach 17 percent penetration by 2030.

The slow 5G rollout con­trasts sharply with Africa’s mobile success story in pre­vious generations of wireless technology. Currently, 3G net­works reach 77 percent of the continent’s population, while 4G coverage extends to 44.3 percent of people.

Comparatively, the de­velopment and growth of 5G in a country like China has been remarkable, as the country’s three major mobile operators in Q3 2025 booked stable profit gains and continued growth in 5G users six years after the commercial launch of the technology, taking their combined total to a stagger­ing 1.14 billion.

China Mobile added 70 million 5G network sub­scribers year-on-year to end-September 2025 with 622 million.