MTN Nigeria Leads West and Central Africa in Mobile Performance, Reveals Ookla Research

Ookla recently published one of its research articles  wherein they examine the mobile performance of select MTN subsidiaries and joint-venture (hereafter referred to as “opcos”) across five of its nine markets in West and Central Africa (WCA). They looked at how these opcos’ performance compares with each other and how it evolved between Q2 2022 and Q2 2024, analyze the factors that impacted their performance, and discuss their 5G plans.

Some of the Key Takeaways include:

• Nigeria leads MTN opcos in West and Central Africa (WCA) in mobile download speed for handsets with modern chipsets, according to Speedtest Intelligence®. In Q2 2024, MTN Nigeria significantly widened its lead over the other opcos in WCA in terms of download speeds, reaching 95.62 Mbps. MTN Nigeria also excelled in median upload speed at 17.01 Mbps, closely followed by MTN Ghana at 16.74 Mbps.
• Despite challenging macroeconomic and operational conditions, MTN opcos in WCA  improved their network performance. While all reviewed MTN opcos rose in performance since Q2 2022, Nigeria and Ghana stood out by moving up the most in download and upload speed rankings over the last 2 years. The two opcos were also the front runners for median multi-server latency, with Ghana achieving this without launching 5G.
• 5G service availability in Nigeria has significantly improved over the last 18 months. Speedtest Intelligence shows that 5G Service —a geospatial measure of the percentage of an operator’s known locations with 5G service— in Nigeria increased from 17.2% in Q1 2023 to 35.70% in Q2 2024, surpassing South Africa’s 31.6%.