MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria recorded sharp increases in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in 2025, according to their financial results. The rise was driven by the combined impact of tariff adjustments and rising data consumption, which boosted customer spending across Nigeria’s telecom sector.

ARPU, a key telecom industry metric, measures the average amount each subscriber spends monthly on telecom services such as voice, data, and digital products.

According to the full-year financial results released by MTN Nigeria, its monthly ARPU rose to $3.60 in 2025 from $2.17 in 2024. Converted into Naira, the company’s ARPU increased to N5,184.01 from N3,542.00, meaning that each customer on the network was spending an average of N5,184.01 per month last year.

This pushed the company’s revenue for the year to N5.2 trillion, a 55.1% increase when compared with the N3.3 trillion it recorded in 2024. MTN disclosed that the number of active data subscribers grew by 11.6%, while smartphone penetration increased by 7.9 percentage points to 66.1%. The company also recorded a 34% increase in data traffic, while average usage per subscriber rose by 20% to 13.1GB monthly, all of which boosted its ARPU. MTN expanded its 4G population coverage by 2.1 percentage points to 84.6%, driven by accelerated investments in network infrastructure and service quality improvements.

For Airtel Nigeria, monthly ARPU climbed to $2.4 in 2025 (full financial year ended March 31, 2026) from $1.7 in 2024. In naira terms, the figure increased to N3,326.4 from N2,599.3. Despite the increase, an average customer on Airtel spends less monthly compared with MTN.

Airtel reported that its revenue grew by 47.4% in constant currency, largely driven by continued strength in the demand for data services and supported by tariff adjustments.