• MTN, Airtel, Vodacom and other telecom firms in Nigeria are considering rolling out services in sectors, like “load-shedding.”
• This is amid an increasingly difficult economic environment in the country, where a weak official currency, electricity crisis and compounding government taxes force them to the brink.
• The Nigerian government says that the warning is merely a way for the telecoms to ask for more money.

The Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), comprised of the leading telecommunications firms in the country, including MTN Nigeria, Airtel, Vodacom and others, are considered a “loadshedding” strategy for their services amid unsustainable economic conditions.

According to a report from Techpoint Africa, ALTON chairman Gbenga Adebayo says that mounting economic challenges in Nigeria have severely impacted the operations of telecom companies in the region, with the potential growing that many may not be able to service all customers at once.

Similar to how Eskom in South Africa was forced to implement loadshedding, rolling blackouts scheduled on timelines, telecoms like MTN Nigeria may have to shed services like data and mobile reception in some areas based on scheduled hours unless the situation in the country improves.

A floundering Naira and government taxes piling onto MTN Nigeria has handed the firm record losses in 2024, with a reported $86 million loss in the first quarter of the year. Headline earnings per of the entire MTN Group dropped 72.3 percent to 315 cents on the back of poor performance in Nigeria, the group’s largest market.

“As we speak, there is an Association of Telecom Landlords whose primary aim is to fix rental charges for telecom facility deployments. This will be in addition to over 40 different taxes and levies the telcos face in the course of their operations,” said Adebayo.

“With all these, services will continue to be impaired. Today, we are heading to a situation where telecom services will be provided in parts because telcos may not be able to service all their sites at the same time.”

Additionally, Nigeria’s ongoing power crisis has forced telecoms to spend considerably more on their own electricity to keep operations rolling, usually through expensive diesel generators at base stations and towers.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) insists that the telecom sector’s warnings of impending loadshedding of services are merely a strategy to get the commission to approve an impending tariff increase.

ALTON is pushing the Nigerian Federal Government to be able to set more reasonable tariffs to cover ballooning operating costs. The NCC has been criticised for failing to do anything while the country’s telecoms sit on the knife edge.

In the end, it will be the subscribers who will suffer, and likely turn to black market tactics to service their needs, just like they turned to cryptocurrency and US dollars to avoid using the increasingly worthless Naira.