Twenty-five years after GSM, Nigeria’s telecoms fight to protect the network

From 400,000 lines to 170 million: Nigeria’s telecom journey

When GSM licences were issued in 2001, Nigeria had fewer than 400,000 connected lines and citizens queued for hours to make a call. Twenty-five years later, active mobile subscriptions have surged past 170 million, making the country Africa’s biggest telecom market and laying the digital foundations for banking, e-commerce, telemedicine and remote work.

But the industry that delivered that transformation now faces its toughest infrastructure test. Speaking at a NITRA conference in Lagos, Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), said the real battle is no longer extending coverage: it is keeping the network alive amid daily attacks on its assets. Rampant vandalism, frequent fibre cuts, unstable electricity, multiple taxation, inconsistent Right-of-Way rules and widespread insecurity have turned resilience into the sector’s overriding priority.

Adebayo likened telecom infrastructure to the Third Mainland Bridge or urban rail links, warning that a sustained disruption would cripple businesses and public services. He dismissed the notion that quality of service can be improved merely by fining operators, arguing that many of the forces degrading service lie beyond their control. Instead, he called for a whole-of-society approach involving government, regulators, security agencies, communities and consumers.

The federal government’s decision to designate telecom infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) was welcomed as the most important policy milestone since liberalisation. Adebayo praised the Nigerian Communications Commission under executive vice chairman Aminu Maida for evidence-based regulation, citing the resolution of the USSD debt dispute with banks and the recent tariff review. Meanwhile, Olufunke Tonye-Preghafi of Quomodo Systems Africa stressed that as businesses adopt AI and cloud, cybersecurity must become a boardroom issue, not just an IT concern, if the digital economy is to deliver lasting value.

The infrastructure squeeze: vandalism, costs and policy gaps

Why the infrastructure threat matters now

The industry’s early years were defined by rollout; today the economics have flipped. Keeping a cell site powered and its fibre backhaul intact is more expensive and harder to guarantee than building the mast in the first place. Diesel costs, theft of equipment and deliberate damage—often by groups selling stolen fibre—directly erode margins and reliability. With over 170 million subscriptions anchored on this fragile grid, every outage ripples through mobile banking, POS transactions, e-learning and logistics, making the stakes national rather than merely sectoral.

The CNII designation: a legal shield, but enforcement will define its value

Classifying telecom assets as Critical National Information Infrastructure is a significant policy step. In theory, it unlocks better coordination with security agencies, stiffer penalties for vandals and faster repairs. The key test ahead is whether state governments and local communities enforce the new protections and stop Right-of-Way disputes from blocking fibre deployment. The NCC’s transparent approach under Aminu Maida—evidenced by the resolution of the long-standing USSD debt and a structured tariff review—suggests a regulator willing to tackle the complaints that have long weakened operator confidence. But CNII remains a framework; its impact will be measured by the speed with which fibre cuts are reduced and the cost of protecting infrastructure falls.

The Mobile Termination Rate review: balancing competition and investment

ALTON’s call for an MTR study free of political pressure reflects a tension at the heart of telecom pricing. A lower termination rate benefits consumers and smaller operators; a rate that is too low, however, risks starving network upgrades of the cash needed to build the resilience Adebayo demands. With AI, cloud and IoT data loads growing, the MTR outcome will influence whether operators can fund the next wave of capex without a further erosion of service quality.

Cybersecurity enters the boardroom

The remarks by Quomodo Systems Africa’s CFO highlight a second, less visible infrastructure race. As Nigerian businesses move more processes to the cloud and integrate AI, the attack surface expands. When critical connectivity is already beset by physical threats, adding sophisticated cyber threats makes an end-to-end resilience strategy a commercial requirement, not a nice-to-have.

What the industry’s next phase demands from regulators and operators

• Operators must harden networks against known physical threats. With fibre cuts and vandalism identified as persistent costs, mass deployment of buried fibre, remote monitoring and rapid-response agreements with security agencies will shift from optional to essential capex.
• State governments need to harmonise Right-of-Way charges and enforcement. ALTON’s criticism of inconsistent policies indicates that a single federal-state compact on telecom infrastructure, linked to the CNII designation, would reduce the delays and costs that make some areas unviable today.
• Banks and fintechs reliant on USSD should model for possible price changes. The resolution of the USSD debt dispute is positive, but the ongoing MTR review could alter the cost structure for mobile-originated transactions; contingency plans for slightly higher per-session charges are prudent.
• Enterprises adopting AI and cloud must treat cybersecurity as a governance issue. The boardroom visibility of cyber risk, as urged by Tonye-Preghafi, means budgeting for continuous security audits, cloud resilience and staff training rather than treating breaches as isolated IT failures.