Nigeria’s active mobile subscriptions cross 200 million in September, highest in 2 years

Active subscriptions for telecommunications services across the networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and T2 crossed the 200 million mark in September 2026, the highest since 2024.

According to the latest industry data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), active mobile subscriptions in the country stood at 200,102,038 at the end of the month, about 3 million increase from 197.1 million recorded in August.

The last time Nigeria’s mobile subscription stood above 200 million was in April 2024 before the NCC’s NIN-SIM linkage enforcement that brought total database down to 171.8 million in May 2024.

MTN accounts for more than half of subscriptions

MTN Nigeria remains the dominant force in the mobile market as it gained over 2 million new subscriptions in the month to close September with 104.6 million active connections.

• With that, MTN’s share of the market now stood at 52.3%, leaving the other three operators to share less than 48%.
• Airtel Nigeria also recorded 618,660 new subscriptions in the month, which brought its database to 68 million.
• As the second largest operator by subscriber number, Airtel accounts for 34% of the market share.
• Globacom also recorded a marginal increase in subscriptions for the month but remains a distant third operator with just 11.89% market share. The telco’s database grew from 23.5 million in August to 23.8 million in September.

For the struggling T2, things have not improved despite a recent national roaming with MTN. NCC’s data shows that the telco’s subscriptions have remained static over the last three months at 3.6 million.

T2 accounts for only 1.89% share of the mobile market as of September 2026.

Nigeria’s internet subscriptions rise

Meanwhile, active subscriptions for the internet across mobile, fixed and VOIP networks in Nigeria rose to 160.9 million in September.

This was driven largely by internet subscription on the mobile networks, which jumped from 158 million in August to 160.4 million in September.

Fixed wireless connections increased from 227,910 in August to 248,651 in September.  VoIP subscriptions declined from 226,766 in August to 223,843 in September. However, ISP data has not been updated for September.

How mobile subscriptions fall below 200 million

The telecom industry saw a huge drop in subscriptions after the verification of the National Identification Numbers (NINs) linked with mobile SIMs in 2024.

• At the end of the exercise, a total of 64.3 million lines were yanked off the networks for not being registered properly.
• The huge loss was significantly driven by two of the operators, Globacom and 9mobile, which shed massive weight due to unverified NINs.
• Globacom, which had 62.1 million active subscriptions as of March 2024, was left with 19.1 million subscriptions at the end of September, losing a whopping 43 million subscriptions.

Similarly, 9mobile, which had lost numerous customers in the past years, was left with only 3.6 million active subscriptions at the end of September.

• As of March 2024, 9mobile’s subscription database stood at 11.6 million, indicating that the telecom operator had lost about eight million subscriptions to the NIN verification exercise

This action left the four GSM operators with a total of 154.6 million active subscriptions at the end of September from 219 million recorded in April 2024.