- Safiu Kehinde
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has blamed heavy data usage for the poor quality of telecommunication network services in Lagos, Abuja, and other major cities.
This was disclosed in a post shared on X on Monday.
According to the post, the NCC had in a new report conducted with broadband analytics firm Ookla, discovered that the to poor network service experienced by telcos customers was as a result of the limited network capacity struggling to handle heavy data usage in densely populated areas.
The NCC stated that while overall network capacity nationwide is satisfactory, capacity issues have been observed in urban areas across all major operators.
It noted that congestion in high-density zones causes dropped calls, buffering, failed mobile payments, and slow downloads, while rural areas remain largely unaffected.
The commission charged the telecom operators to priortise targeted infrastructure investments and adopt a two-pronged strategy—aggressively deploying 5G technology and optimizing existing 4G (LTE) networks.
NCC harped on the need for urgent urban upgrades to ensure consistent service.
According to report, subscribers have recently voiced frustration over poor data speeds and unstable signals, with some reporting that their 5G routers barely deliver 1Mbps except at night.Â
In reaction, operators blame frequent fibre cuts and vandalism for many of the outages, estimating an average of 1,100 fibre cuts weekly nationwide.