Tariff hike: See how much MTN, Airtel earn per customer monthly

MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria recorded sharp increases in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in 2025, according to their financial results.

The rise was driven by the combined impact of tariff adjustments and rising data consumption, which boosted customer spending across Nigeria’s telecom sector.

ARPU, a key telecom industry metric, measures the average amount each subscriber spends monthly on telecom services such as voice, data and digital products.

What the data is saying

According to the full-year financial results released by the company, MTN Nigeria’s monthly ARPU rose to $3.60 in 2025 from $2.17 in 2024.

• Converted into Naira, the company’s ARPU increased to N5,184.01 from N3,542.00, meaning that each customer on the network was spending an average of N5,184.01 per month last year.
• This pushed the company’s revenue for the year to N5.2 trillion, a 55.1% increase when compared with the N3.3 trillion it recorded in 2024.
• MTN disclosed that the number of active data subscribers grew by 11.6%, while smartphone penetration increased by 7.9 percentage points to 66.1%.
• The company also recorded a 34% increase in data traffic, while average usage per subscriber rose by 20% to 13.1GB monthly, all of which boosted its ARPU.

In addition, MTN expanded its 4G population coverage by 2.1 percentage points to 84.6%, driven by accelerated investments in network infrastructure and service quality improvements.

For Airtel Nigeria, monthly ARPU climbed to $2.4 in 2025 (full financial year ended March 31, 2026) from $1.7 in 2024.

In naira terms, the figure increased to N3,326.4 from N2,599.3. Despite the increase, an average customer on Airtel spends less monthly compared with MTN.

Airtel reported that its revenue grew by 47.4% in constant currency, largely driven by continued strength in the demand for data services and supported by tariff adjustments.

• “In reported currency, revenue grew by 52.8% to $1,598m with Q4’26 revenue growth at 54.7% (40.2% in constant currency). 
• “The constant currency revenue growth was driven by ARPU growth of 36.7% and customer base growth of 9.4%,” the company stated.

The company’s data revenue increased by 63.6%, supported by growth in both data customers and data ARPU.

Airtel said data customer growth stood at 8.1%, while data ARPU expanded by 49.2% during the year.

The telecom operator also recorded a significant rise in internet consumption, with average data usage per customer increasing by 30.8% to 11GB monthly from 8.4GB recorded in the previous year.

More insights

The increase in customer spending followed the implementation of the 50% telecom tariff adjustment approved by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) early last year, which raised the prices of voice calls, SMS and data bundles across the industry.

• With the increment, SMS, the cost of an SMS, which stood at N4.00 for several years, was increased to N6.00, while voice call and data tariffs were also increased accordingly.
• However, beyond the tariff hike, growing data consumption among Nigerians also played a major role in lifting telecom revenues and subscriber spending.
• According to the NCC, data consumption in Nigeria has been growing at an unprecedented level between last year and this year.

Last week, the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, disclosed that Nigerians are now consuming about 45,800 terabytes of data every day, reflecting the country’s rapidly growing dependence on internet services and digital platforms.

He said the daily consumption brought total consumed data in March 2026 to 1.42 million, compared with 995,000 terabytes recorded within the corresponding period of 2025.

What you should know 

The increase in data usage by Nigerians is also putting a strain on the telecom networks, a development that has led to the poor service quality experienced by subscribers in recent times.

However, the NCC said the operators are responding to this challenge by increasing their investments in network capacity expansion.

According to the telecom regulator, the network operators have committed to upgrading 12,000 sites this year to improve service quality across the country.

Meanwhile, the Commission has also recently directed the telcos to compensate subscribers in areas where network quality fell below prescribed standards.