The Nigerian Communications Commission on Thursday directed telecommunications operators to compensate subscribers with airtime credits for poor network quality, the commission's chief Aminu Maida said, following verified failures by operators to meet minimum quality standards in several locations across the country. "It is not a refund from the regulator but a compliance obligation placed on service providers," Maida said, and he said the directive covers service failures recorded between November 2025 and January 2026 across multiple network providers.
Under the commission's order, eligible subscribers will receive airtime credits and notifications explaining the cause and value of the compensation, Maida said. He added that "independent checks will confirm that affected subscribers are properly credited," and warned that sanctions may be imposed on operators that fail to comply with the framework. The NCC has also shifted performance tracking from the state level to the local government level to capture subscriber experience more accurately.
MTN Nigeria responded on Thursday, saying the company is fully complying with the NCC directive and has begun processes to credit affected customers in impacted locations. "At MTN Nigeria, our customers are the lifeblood of our business. We exist to connect Nigerians to the digital world, and we believe that every subscriber deserves a reliable, high-quality network experience," the company said, adding that "all consumers within the affected areas where service shortfalls were recorded will receive compensation for the operating periods of November, December, and January, in accordance with the applicable framework." MTN said it will accelerate capital expenditure aimed at strengthening infrastructure and will deepen collaboration with tower infrastructure partners to improve uptime and service reliability.
The commission and industry data point to a heavy upgrade program this year: telcos plan to upgrade about 12,000 base stations in 2026. By contrast, the industry completed just over 300 base station upgrades in 2025 and about 2,800 upgrades in the early part of 2026. The planned work includes expansion of existing site capacity, deployment of new infrastructure and conversion of legacy 2G and 3G sites to 4G and 5G technologies.
The compensation framework is part of broader reforms the NCC says are intended to improve accountability and restore consumer confidence in the telecom sector. Regulators have framed the credits as a corrective measure aimed at subscribers affected during the three-month window, and as a way to pressure operators to close service gaps exposed by rising data demand.
Industry executives have long flagged a set of ecosystem constraints that complicate those fixes: unreliable power supply, right-of-way hurdles, security threats, fibre cuts, vandalism and other third-party risks that affect uptime. Those practical barriers help explain why thousands of base station upgrades remain to be completed even as operators pledge heavier spending and closer cooperation with tower partners.
The friction is plain: the NCC has moved from broader, state-level oversight to granular, local-government tracking, and it has paired that monitoring with enforceable compensation and the prospect of sanctions. Operators say they are stepping up spending and work plans; regulators say independent verification will follow. How quickly the sector can translate promises into functioning sites matters to millions of subscribers and to the credibility of the new enforcement regime.
The single most consequential unanswered question is whether operators can deliver on the roughly 12,000 base‑station upgrades planned for 2026 and satisfy the independent checks the NCC has promised — because if they cannot, airtime credits will be only a short-term correction, not the long-term fix the regulator has made the centrepiece of telecom reform.
