Airtel Nigeria has been rated the fastest network in the telecoms broadband category. Ookla, a global leader in mobile and broadband network intelligence, testing applications and technology, made this rating public recently.
According to Ookla’s latest Q3 2021 market report on the state of Nigeria’s mobile and fixed networks, Airtel Nigeria had a speed of 33.43mbps. This makes it the fastest among broadband networks available in the country. This is a 17 per cent growth rate from the numbers it recorded in the first half of 2021.
The figures show steady, significant growth from the 27.18mbps it recorded in the first quarter of 2021 and the 28.82mbps speed score recorded in the second quarter of the same year.
Coming second as fastest network speed in this report is MTN Nigeria. The yellow network recorded a speed score rating of 18.70mb, 25.87mb and 26.15mb for the first, second and third quarters, respectively. Other telecom brands in the Nigerian market, Glo and 9mobile recorded speed score ratings as low as 11.72mb and 10.21mb respectively.
In a statement, Airtel explained that its speed score could be attributed to data consumption by its subscribers. In Q1 2021, its data revenue soared by 26 per cent to hit $152 million, up from $120 million. This data revenue accounted for about 35.4 per cent of total revenue in the year. Average data consumption per user also rose from 1.9 GB per month to 3.2 GB per month.
Likewise, in Q2, data revenue rose by 48.8 per cent to hit $171 million, up from $152 million. This represented the highest growth percentage witnessed by any segment of the telecoms industry. The growth was driven by a 41.5 per cent growth in ARPU for data and supported by a 42.2 per cent increase in data consumption per customer as average data consumption rose to 3.8 GB per month.
Rating the consistency score, Airtel overtook MTN to become the broadband with the highest consistency score on mobile. The broadband recorded 89.4 per cent consistency score compared to its closest competitor MTN that had 82.7 per cent.
This is a seven per cent increase from the previous quarter when Airtel had a consistency score of 82.5 per cent, which was 0.9 per cent lower than MTN’s.
