Noah Banjo’s work has not been as seamless as his employers would have preferred so far in 2025.
“I cannot work as much because my Airtel network has been bad consistently.”
The situation is the same for Oreoluwa Abolade, whose job depends on strong and stable connectivity.
“My work needs me to be constantly connected because I have to track customers’ complaints in real time while speaking to them on the phone. I am rarely frustrated when I work from the office because we use a fibre connection, but on days I have to work from home, I barely achieve anything,” she said.
Banjo and Abolade are among many remote workers in Nigeria whose productivity has taken a hit due to inconsistent network quality and frequent outages. According to Uptime, a network monitoring platform run by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country experienced 281 major network outages between May 13 and June 11, 2025. This translates to an average of one outage every 2.56 hours.
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During this period, Airtel recorded 61 major outages; 9mobile reported 113; Glo, 67; and MTN Nigeria, 40.
Most of these were caused by fibre cuts, often resulting from roadworks or vandalism.
These outages often lead to complete service disruption affecting voice calls, SMS, mobile data, and USSD services for hours at a time. Less severe disruptions, which occur even more frequently, also affect service quality.
According to Yahaya Ibrahim, chief technical officer at MTN Nigeria, the operator handles 30 fibre cuts daily.
Airtel Nigeria, with its 58.59 million subscribers, reports an average of 43 fibre cuts daily. In Lagos alone, telecom operators recorded over 2,500 fibre cuts in 2024, particularly in high-construction areas such as Ikeja, Lekki, and Victoria Island, according to Jude Ighomena, senior manager at Broadbased Communications.
When cables are not being destroyed, they are being stolen. “Cable theft is a serious issue,” said Wale Owoeye, chief executive officer of Cedarview Communications Limited.
“Airtel representatives told me they experience a cable cut every six minutes. The assumption that all black cables contain valuable copper leads to reckless vandals.”
These disruptions lead to degraded internet connectivity, making it difficult for remote workers to attend meetings, meet deadlines, or maintain productivity. According to a Zoho report, only 14 percent of Nigerian businesses operate fully remotely. However, 31 percent use a hybrid model, while 55 percent remain fully on-site.
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Internet dependence in Nigeria has grown considerably since COVID-19.“The increase in data usage is directly linked to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted normal activities and most functions had to be held virtually, including schools, corporate meetings, etc,” the NCC said in 2020.
According to the NCC, monthly internet usage jumped from 125,149.86 terabytes (TB) in December 2019 to 983,283.43 TB in April 2025. “Nigerians lose valuable business hours and finances due to poor service delivery by these network service providers,” said Emmanuel Ukpong, a Reps member, representing Ikono/ Ini Federal Constituency.
Fibre optic cables are critical to internet connectivity because they bring network capacity closer to users. At the end of 2023, Nigeria had deployed 78,676 kilometres of fibre optic cable, with most concentrated in urban areas like Lagos (7,864.60km), Edo (4,892.71km), FCT (4,472.03km), Ogun (4,189.18km), and Niger (3,681.66km).
According to the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), uninterrupted infrastructure is essential for quality service. “Depending on the root of the impact, it can lead to prolonged outages. It disrupts smooth operations,” said Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of ALTON.
Beyond service impact, these cuts are expensive to fix. In 2023 alone, damaged fibre cables cost telecom operators $23 million in repairs and lost revenue. MTN suffered over 6,000 cuts that year and relocated 2,500 kilometres of vulnerable cables between 2022 and 2023, at a cost of more than N11 billion. That investment, if channelled elsewhere, could have built 870 kilometres of new fibre infrastructure.
To combat this, the federal government in 2024 designated telecom infrastructure as critical national infrastructure, joining countries like China, India, and the United States in applying strict penalties for fibre tampering.
Under the law, it is now a criminal offence to intentionally damage fibre cables. Offenders can face up to 10 years in prison without the option of a fine.
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“It makes it easier to secure our infrastructure, and it sends a strong signal that damaging this infrastructure affects millions of people,” said Ibrahim of MTN.
To also improve resilience, telecom operators are investing in more redundancies. “MTN is never really out because of the resilience of our network and the amount of redundancy we have built in. It is not perfect, but it is never completely unavailable,” Ibrahim added.
The operator forecasts N900 billion in network investment in 2025 to improve resilience. The future of remote working is dependent on stable connectivity, and according to Aminu Maida, the executive vice chairman of the NCC, “We need to build a reliable telecom industry with impressive quality of service indicators with quality of experience as our watchword and ultimate goal.”
