But the median speed does not tell the whole story.

A closer look at the fastest and slowest users shows where the biggest change is happening. The bottom 10% represents users with the slowest connections, while the top 10% represents those with the fastest.

For users with the weakest connections, download speeds rose from 2.24 Mbps in 2023 to 6.04 Mbps in the first half of 2026. Among users with the strongest connections, speeds increased from 74.37 Mbps to 90.04 Mbps.

In other words, the biggest gains are happening at the bottom. Nigeria is not just making its fastest internet connections faster; it is also improving the experience of people who previously had some of the weakest connections.

The gap between those gains tells us something important about the current stage of Nigeria’s fibre rollout. The country is not primarily getting faster by pushing already-fast connections to ever-higher speeds. It is getting faster by moving more people onto better networks.

That is a more consequential change for a developing broadband market. Moving a household from a 2 Mbps connection to 6 Mbps can fundamentally change what it can do online. Moving another household from 74 Mbps to 90 Mbps is an improvement, but the practical difference is considerably smaller.

“Fibre plays a key role in driving data communication for now,” Mukesh Chandra, former chief technology officer at Globacom and a telecom infrastructure consultant, told TechCabal. “Without fibre, heavy data traffic can’t be transported from wireless or wireless access networks, which connect end users to the internet using either Wi-Fi, mobile data networks or fixed wireline broadband connections.”

Fibre is changing the market

The shift is also visible in subscriber numbers.

Nigeria’s fibre broadband market is growing quickly. The number of homes and businesses connected to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) rose from 84,141 in Q4 2025 to 265,000 by June 2026, according to Ookla. That is more than three times the number of connections in about six months.

Fibre has also overtaken Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) to become Nigeria’s biggest fixed broadband technology for the first time. FWA connects homes and businesses wirelessly, while fibre uses physical cables.

The shift shows that Nigeria’s broadband market is changing. Fibre is becoming the primary technology driving faster, more reliable internet connections.

Karim Yaici, lead industry analyst at Ookla covering the Middle East and Africa, told TechCabal that the growth in broadband speeds across Africa is being driven mainly by fibre. People moving from older, slower connections can go from speeds of around 10 Mbps to fibre plans offering 30–50 Mbps or more.

That is also why Nigeria’s slowest internet connections are improving faster than its fastest ones.

For someone moving from a poor connection to an entry-level fibre plan, the improvement is much bigger than for an existing customer upgrading from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps.

So, the real test of Nigeria’s fibre growth may not be how fast the country’s fastest connections become. It is about how quickly more people with poor internet access can move to reliable connections that are sufficient for everyday digital services.

Yaici said this is a positive change from two or three years ago, when Nigeria had clear broadband goals but fibre connections were growing much more slowly.

The next gains will be harder

There is, however, a limit to how long fibre can continue to drive such rapid improvements.

The first stage is easier: connect people who are using slower technologies, and average internet speeds improve quickly. The next stage is harder. Operators have to add more network capacity, upgrade equipment, reach less profitable areas and persuade customers to pay for faster plans. This helps explain why the fastest connections have improved more slowly.

Yaici said operators also have a reason to gradually increase speeds. Giving every customer the fastest connection immediately leaves less room to move them to more expensive plans later.

That leaves Nigeria with two different challenges: getting more people onto fibre and getting existing fibre users to pay for higher speeds. The first is mainly an infrastructure challenge. The second is an economic one.

Chandra points to another challenge: building the networks needed to carry large volumes of internet traffic is expensive, and not every ISP can afford it.

“It is not possible for every ISP or operator to deploy national long-distance (NLD) and international long-distance (ILD) fibre networks because of the heavy investment required in fibre and OTN network infrastructure,” Chandra said.

Instead, a smaller number of telecom operators, ISPs and infrastructure companies can build these large networks and lease capacity to other providers.

That makes economic sense. An ISP does not need to own every part of the network. It can focus on connecting customers and providing the service while using another company’s fibre network to carry the traffic.

As Chandra explained, the quality of a customer’s internet connection depends on more than whether fibre is available. The type of connection into the home, the capacity of the wider network, congestion and the equipment used by the ISP all affect the final experience.

That is why internet speed alone is not enough to measure Nigeria’s broadband progress. The country also needs to improve coverage, affordability, reliability and the quality of service.

The adoption problem

The next challenge is demand. Building a fibre network does not mean people will automatically subscribe. Customers still need to be able to afford the service, and that becomes harder outside major cities, where there are fewer households to serve.

Yaici said affordability remains one of the biggest challenges for fibre operators across Africa. Weekly and prepaid plans could help customers who cannot afford traditional monthly subscriptions.

“Laying out the fibre is just the first step,” Yaici said. The bigger challenge is getting people to understand the value of fibre and convincing them to pay for it.

Ghana shows how this can play out. The country had 261,938 fibre subscribers in Q4 2025, up 18.4% from a year earlier. Yet fibre reached less than 0.8% of the population, with most connections concentrated in cities and nearby areas.

Nigeria could face a similar problem if its fibre network grows faster than household incomes. Getting fibre to an area is only half the job. Getting people to subscribe is the other half.

The challenge is even greater in rural areas, where building fibre is expensive. Operators have to pay for digging, equipment, labour, road repairs and other costs. Long-distance fibre can also cost tens of thousands of dollars per kilometre, depending on the terrain and existing infrastructure.

That makes cities and densely populated areas more attractive because operators can connect more customers with less infrastructure.

But rural communities do not necessarily need fibre running directly into every home.

Olajide Mafolabomi, CEO of UCard Innovations and a non-executive director at Telserve Networks, said fibre can reach rural areas as the main network, while wireless technology connects homes.

“Fibre will reach rural areas, but not as Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH). The last mile will be wireless for them — 4G, 5G or WTTH, wireless to the home,” Mafolabomi said.

As telecom operators replace older microwave links with fibre, high-capacity networks can also reach deeper into rural areas. From there, homes and businesses can connect through mobile networks, fixed wireless or other technologies.

This means Nigeria does not need fibre running to every building to achieve wider broadband access. The goal should be to bring high-capacity infrastructure as close as possible to communities and use the most affordable technology for the final connection.

In cities, that could mean fibre. In other areas, it could be fixed wireless or mobile networks. In remote locations where building terrestrial networks is too expensive, satellites could fill the gap.

The real measure of Nigeria’s broadband progress, then, should not be how many kilometres of fibre are laid. It should be whether more people can afford reliable, high-quality internet wherever they live.

The infrastructure-sharing question

Nigeria’s fibre boom also raises a bigger question: who will build the networks that other internet providers rely on?

Ookla’s data does not show how the 265,000 fibre subscribers are split among ISPs, so it is unclear whether the growth is spread across many providers or driven by a few large companies.

Yaici warned that this could become a problem if only a small number of companies can afford to build large fibre networks. With fewer infrastructure providers, there could be less competition on prices, which could eventually affect consumers.

Chandra said the reason is simple: building national and international fibre networks is extremely expensive, and most ISPs cannot afford to build their own.

That makes infrastructure sharing increasingly important. Instead of every ISP building its own network, companies can share existing fibre infrastructure and focus on connecting customers and providing services.

Nigeria’s Wholesale Fixed Broadband Market Assessment aims to encourage infrastructure sharing and open access. States have also been encouraged to reduce or remove right-of-way fees, which can make fibre deployment cheaper.

But creating the rules is only the first step. The bigger question is whether companies can make infrastructure sharing work in practice.

Yaici said the answer is still unclear. While the legal and partnership frameworks can be put in place, the real challenge is making the model work commercially and technically. Sharing existing fibre could help ISPs reduce costs and avoid repeatedly digging up roads to build competing networks.

Chandra believes Nigeria also needs a strong national fibre backbone connecting major cities through multiple routes. This would make the network more reliable and reduce the risk of a single fibre cut disrupting large parts of the country.

That backbone would then connect to metro networks and local access networks that deliver fibre to homes and businesses.

The bigger goal is not for every ISP to own its own fibre network. It is to build enough shared infrastructure for more providers to compete, expand coverage and offer cheaper, better internet to customers.

The next phase is about more than speed

Nigeria’s fibre expansion is already improving internet speeds. But the next challenge is making sure those gains reach more people at affordable prices.

Three things will matter most: affordability, wider coverage and competition. More people need to be able to afford fibre, networks need to reach beyond major cities, and infrastructure ownership should not become too concentrated among a few companies.

The biggest positive is that Nigeria is improving its broadband baseline. The challenge now is to keep raising it without leaving rural communities, low-income households or competition behind.

Laying the fibre is only the beginning. Making it affordable and widely available is the harder part.

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