Nigeria’s Mobile Internet Speed Ranks 89th In The World In January 2023

The Speedtest Global Index for January 2023 has been released, with Nigeria moving up four places from December 2022 to rank 89th in the world for mobile internet speed in January 2023. The country also moved one place up to rank 144th in the world for fixed broadband speed. 

According to Ookla’s recently released index, Nigeria had a mobile internet upload speed of 10.63 Mbps and a download speed of 22.78 Mbps in January 2023. The country had an average upload and download speed of 10.97Mbps and 12.23Mbps respectively for fixed broadband. 

The index also showed that Nigeria is ranked 7th in Africa for mobile internet speed. South Africa (58th in the world), Morocco (63rd in the world), Togo (66th in the world), Uganda (75th in the world), Mauritius (80th in the world), and Egypt (86th in the world), are the six countries that ranked ahead of Nigeria in Africa. 

For the mobile internet providers, Airtel ranked as the fastest internet provider with an average download speed of 22.42 Mbps, followed by MTN with a download speed of 21.71 Mbps. Glo and 9Mobile rank behind with download speeds of 8.70 Mbps and 8.32 Mbps respectively. 

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Concerning latency, mobile internet latency remained unchanged from December 2022 at 31 ms, while broadband internet had an unchanged latency of 17 ms. Airtel has the lowest median latency among the mobile internet providers for Q1 2022 with 26 ms, they were followed by Glo, MTN, and 9mobile with latencies of 32, 33, and 34 respectively.  

In Nigeria for Q1 2022, Airtel had the highest consistency score, with 85.4% of their results showing a minimum download speed of 5 Mbps and a minimum upload speed of 1 Mbps.

Kano had the highest mobile internet speed among the cities, with a median download speed of 19.31 Mbps and an upload speed of 8.62 Mbps. Lagos followed closely with a median download speed of 18.03 Mbps and an upload speed of 8.31 Mbps. Ibadan, Port Harcourt, and Benin City completed the list for the top 5 cities per mobile internet speed in Nigeria. 

According to NCC’s report, fixed broadband accounts for only 0.05% of Nigeria’s internet subscription, indicating that Nigeria is not a significant broadband internet country. However, with the introduction of Elon Musk’s Starlink to Nigeria, the story is expected to change as the device provides coverage to every inch of the Nigerian border, thus leading the President to proclaim that “Nigeria has attained 100% broadband penetration” albeit untrue. Starlink’s internet speed is also expected to be another game-changer.

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Apart from Starlink, the improvement of internet speed in Nigeria is anticipated with the launch of MTN’s 5G network, as well as the upcoming 5G networks from Mafab Communications and Airtel. 

The Speedtest Global Index is a monthly index that ranks mobile internet and fixed broadband speeds from around the world. The index ranks based on 300 unique user results from a particular location for mobile or fixed broadband internet. 

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