MTN outperforms Airtel and Glo as Nigeria’s fastest mobile network in 2025

 In a definitive shift for the Nigerian telecommunications landscape, MTN Nigeria has officially emerged as the nation’s undisputed leader in mobile network performance for 2025. According to the year-end "Barometer of Mobile Internet Connections" released by global testing platform nPerf, MTN significantly outpaced its primary rivals, Airtel and Globacom (Glo), across nearly every technical and user-experience metric.

A Dominant Performance Across the Board

The data, which analyzed millions of user-initiated tests between January and December 2025, awarded MTN a leading nPerf score of 37,106 points. This figure stands in stark contrast to Airtel’s 25,614 points and Glo’s 20,475 points, highlighting a widening performance gap in the highly competitive Nigerian market.

The cornerstone of MTN’s victory lies in its raw speed. The telco recorded an average download speed of 18.65 Mbps, nearly doubling the performance of Glo (7.46 Mbps) and comfortably leading Airtel (10.57 Mbps). MTN’s upload speeds followed a similar trajectory, averaging 8.70 Mbps, which has become a critical benchmark for Nigeria's growing population of content creators, remote workers, and small business .

The 5G Factor: Widening the Gap

Industry analysts attribute MTN's dominance largely to its aggressive 5G rollout and the optimization of its 4G infrastructure. By the end of 2025, MTN’s median 5G download speeds in major urban centers like Lagos and Abuja hit a staggering 226.6 Mbps, positioning it as the fastest operator not just in Nigeria, but in West Africa.

While Airtel has made significant strides in 5G deployment, MTN’s broader coverage and "Reliability Experience" (scoring 730 on a 1000-point scale) have made it the preferred choice for data-intensive users. Opensignal’s 2025 report noted that MTN swept all six speed-related awards, encompassing both overall and 5G categories

Airtel and Glo: Finding Their Niche

Despite MTN’s sweep, the report offered glimmers of excellence for the other "Big Three" members. Airtel remains a formidable contender in video quality, winning the "Video Experience" and "4G Video Experience" awards outright in some regional reports. Airtel’s focus on high-definition streaming has allowed it to maintain a loyal subscriber base among entertainment-heavy users.

Globacom (Glo), on the other hand, showed surprising resilience in network latency. While it lagged in raw download speeds, Glo recorded the lowest latency in several tests, averaging 121.81 ms a vital metric for online gaming and real-time communication where "lag" can be a dealbreaker. Glo also remains the leader in "affordability perception," continuing to offer the most aggressive data-to-naira ratios in the country.

Market Implications for 2026

The 2025 rankings arrive at a time of massive growth for Nigeria’s digital economy. According to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), broadband penetration crossed the 50% threshold in late 2025, with active mobile subscriptions hovering around 172 million.

"The Nigerian mobile internet sector demonstrates strong competition with three operators delivering differentiated service profiles," stated nPerf in its summary. "Users are benefiting from increasingly capable networks, particularly for streaming and data-intensive applications."

However, despite the speed gains, network congestion during "peak hours" (6:00 PM to 11:00 PM) continues to affect all providers. MTN’s ability to maintain a more consistent performance during these hours was cited as a key reason for its top ranking.

As we move into 2026, the battleground is shifting toward satellite-to-mobile technology and deeper fiber-optic penetration. With MTN currently holding the crown, Airtel and Glo will likely focus their 2026 capital expenditures on closing the 5G availability gap and reclaiming their positions in the speed charts.