The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said telecoms have committed to upgrading 12,000 sites this year to improve service quality across the country.
Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, disclosed this during a media chat held in Lagos on Thursday, where he urged subscribers to remain patient as ongoing investments begin to reflect in user experience.
According to Maida, operators carried out just over 3000 site upgrades for coverage and capacity in 2025, but with a commitment to 12,000 in 2026, they are now ramping up infrastructure investments and network expansion.
What the NCC boss is saying
Maida said the operators are already making progress with 2,800 sites already upgraded this year.
- “So far, 2,800 of those have been done, including about 63 new sites,” he said.
He explained that the upgrades include additional spectrum deployment on 4G sites as well as the conversion of older 2G and 3G sites to 4G and 5G infrastructure.
Maida noted that the current pace of deployment shows the industry is already ahead of last year’s performance.
- “We are already way ahead of what we did last year,” he said.
More insights
The NCC boss also said operators have sustained their investment commitments, adding that one telecom company has already committed $1 billion in spending this year.
He said the capital injection is helping to fund network expansion and improve service quality across the country.
- “We reported last year that we were over a billion. This year, one of them has already committed over a billion,” Maida stated.
Speaking on spectrum management, Maida said the commission had executed several spectrum trades to help operators improve network capacity.
He described spectrum as the highway through which telecom traffic is carried, noting that wider and better spectrum resources translate to improved network performance.
Through the secondary market framework, the NCC made available 100MHz of previously underutilized spectrum.
According to him, the spectrum had been held by operators such as NATCOM and T2 (mobile), and was redistributed across the top three mobile network operators.
He added that the commission also released a substantial portion of its own 50MHz holdings to support the industry.
- “This was what enabled some of the site upgrades that I was referring to, so that the operators can have wider highways and better quality highways,” he said.
Maida noted that the lower band spectrum is especially useful for expanding coverage in rural communities because of its wider reach.
On customer protection, Maida said the NCC’s directive on compensation for affected subscribers would take effect immediately.
He said the measure is designed to ensure that users who experience poor service receive value back.
- “The philosophy here was that it lets the people who are suffering get something back,” he said.
What you should know
Following the approval of 50% tariff adjustment for telecom operators early last year, NCC said the operators had invested over $1 billion in infrastructure to boost network capacity.
- “This act alone has allowed investments to flow in. We will be revealing more specific figures in the coming weeks after verification, but we are talking about over a billion dollars’ worth of investment in 2025 alone,” the NCC’s EVC said during a roundtable with the media in August last year.
Maida explained that the new pricing regime has reversed years of under-investment that slowed network expansion and weakened service quality.
He pointed out that before then, the value chain was lopsided—tower companies could adjust prices annually for inflation and FX rates, but MNOs were stuck with fixed tariffs.
