The Nigerian Communications Commission has revealed that Nigerians used a total of 721,522 terabytes of data in January this year.As the Commission started to publish statistics, this has been the most consumed data in one month.As a result of the increased activity during the festive period, data consumption jumped to 713,200 terabytes in December 2023, but this was still lower than the January record.
Despite a decrease in internet users for the month, there was an increase in data consumption during January; internet subscriptions in Nigeria declined by 1.9 million from 163.8 million in December 2023 to 161.9 million in January 2024, according to NCC’s data.
An increase in the number of Nigerians switching to 4G and 5G networks, which offer faster speeds, has led to an increase in the amount of data consumed by users, which in turn has led to an increase in the number of megabytes of data consumed by users.
Recall MTN launched the first 5G network in Nigeria in September 2022, while Airtel launched the same in June 2023; Mafab Communications, which secured the 5G license at the same time as MTN could not roll out the service until late 2023 when it began to sell its routers.
