Nigeria’s broadband market is undergoing a major shift as fibre networks expand and more households and businesses gain access to faster internet.

New data from Ookla shows just how significant the improvement has been. Median fixed broadband download speeds, excluding satellite connections, climbed from 13.50 Mbps in 2023 to 34.47 Mbps in the first half of 2026, representing a 155% increase.

Upload speeds have also improved, rising to 25.17 Mbps, while network latency has fallen from 47.9 milliseconds to 35.8 milliseconds.

But the most interesting part of Nigeria’s broadband growth is not happening at the very top of the market. It is happening among users with the weakest connections.

The biggest gains are coming from the bottom

The slowest 10% of internet users saw their median download speeds increase from just 2.24 Mbps in 2023 to 6.04 Mbps in the first half of 2026.

Meanwhile, speeds among the fastest 10% increased from 74.37 Mbps to 90.04 Mbps.

That difference is important.

For someone moving from a 2 Mbps connection to 6 Mbps, the improvement can significantly change what they are able to do online. Streaming, remote work, online learning and other digital services become considerably more practical.

For someone already receiving 74 Mbps, moving to 90 Mbps is useful, but the everyday difference is much smaller.

This suggests that Nigeria's broadband improvement is increasingly about bringing more people onto better networks, rather than simply making the fastest connections even faster.

Fibre is becoming the dominant fixed broadband technology

The expansion of fibre is playing a major role in that change.

According to Ookla data, Fibre-to-the-Premises connections increased from approximately 84,141 in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 265,000 by June 2026.

That represents more than a threefold increase in roughly six months.

Fibre has also overtaken Fixed Wireless Access as Nigeria's largest fixed broadband technology.

The shift matters because fibre can provide significantly higher capacity and more consistent performance than many older connectivity technologies.

However, building fibre infrastructure is only one part of the equation.

Getting connected is not the same as being able to afford it

Nigeria's next broadband challenge may be considerably harder.

Operators can continue laying fibre, but households still need to be able to afford subscriptions.

This becomes particularly difficult in lower-income and rural communities, where operators may have fewer potential customers to recover the cost of network deployment.

The cost of construction is another obstacle. Installing long-distance fibre requires substantial spending on cables, equipment, labour and civil works.

That is one reason infrastructure sharing could become increasingly important.

Instead of every internet service provider building its own nationwide network, companies can lease capacity from larger infrastructure operators and concentrate on serving customers.

Rural Nigeria may need a different approach

Fibre does not necessarily have to reach every home for communities to benefit from high-capacity infrastructure.

In densely populated cities, Fibre-to-the-Home can make economic sense.

In rural communities, however, fibre could serve as the backbone while technologies such as 4G, 5G or fixed wireless provide the final connection to homes and businesses.

Satellite connectivity can also play a role in locations where terrestrial infrastructure is too expensive or difficult to deploy.

The goal, therefore, should not simply be to connect every building with fibre. It should be to make reliable, affordable broadband available to as many people as possible, using whichever technology makes the most economic sense for each location.

Infrastructure sharing could shape the next phase

Another question is who will actually build and operate the networks that smaller providers depend on.

National and international fibre networks require enormous investment, making it unrealistic for every ISP to build its own infrastructure.

A stronger infrastructure-sharing model could allow multiple providers to use existing networks instead of repeatedly digging roads and deploying competing fibre routes.

That could reduce costs and potentially encourage more competition.

Nigeria's broadband strategy is already moving toward greater infrastructure sharing, while efforts to reduce right-of-way costs could make fibre deployment easier.

But successful infrastructure sharing will require more than regulations. Operators also need commercially workable agreements and sufficient technical capacity.

Speed is no longer the only measure of progress

Nigeria's fibre expansion is clearly improving broadband performance.

The bigger question now is whether those improvements will translate into more affordable and reliable internet for ordinary Nigerians.

Three factors will be particularly important:

  • Affordability: More households need to be able to pay for broadband.
  • Coverage: High-capacity networks must expand beyond major urban centres.
  • Competition: Infrastructure ownership should not become concentrated among only a few players.

Nigeria has made significant progress in improving the country's broadband infrastructure.

But laying fibre is only the beginning.

The real measure of success will be whether that infrastructure helps more Nigerians work, study, run businesses and participate in the digital economy without internet costs becoming another barrier.