Suspicious, I logged into Facebook, and my fears were confirmed. I was out of mobile data, with an option inviting me to ‘enjoy’ Facebook for ‘free’, but without pictures.
Grudgingly, I recharged. And right there, my purchase of a 112.5GB data plan was a small but revealing part of the story behind how MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telecommunications company, grew its revenue to N3.0 trillion in the first half of 2026, according to its financial report for the period ended June 30.
As profit before tax rose by 75.5 percent to N1.09 trillion during the period, MTN Nigeria’s Chief Executive Officer, Karl Toriola, said:
“We delivered a strong first-half performance, with sustained commercial momentum, improved profitability and robust cash generation. This reflects the resilience of demand for our services, disciplined execution across the business and continued focus on efficiency in a challenging operating environment.”
Data is the new oil (your mobile subscription)
Between January and June 2026, MTN generated N1.7 trillion from data alone, representing a 38.4 percent increase from the same period in 2025.
That figure is roughly equivalent to the entire 2026 budget of Ogun State, a state with an estimated population of 6.4 million people. It is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that data usage has become the backbone of MTN’s financial performance.
A moment of reflection on your own data consumption helps explain why.
Checks by TechMedia Africa, using MTN’s mobile app, show that a 14.5GB value data plan with a 30-day validity costs N5,000. Because data usage varies from person to person, how long that plan lasts depends largely on individual consumption.
In my case, I consume about 112GB in a month. That means I would need to subscribe about 7.7 times monthly if I relied on the 14.5GB plan, spending roughly N38,620, more than half of Nigeria’s N70,000 minimum wage.
With that perspective, it became less surprising to see why MTN reported N1.09 trillion in profit before tax and N707.5 billion in profit after tax, even after paying N622.6 billion in taxes and levies.
The more I examined the numbers, the clearer it became that my experience was not unusual. Millions of Nigerians are buying data more frequently, consuming larger volumes, and spending more on internet access than they did a year ago.
According to the report, total data traffic across MTN’s network increased by 25.8 percent compared with H1 2025.
Like me, more people are using data. The report shows that the average MTN customer now consumes 14.8GB of data per month, a 15.2 percent increase from the previous year.
“With smartphone penetration at 66.4 percent, data remains our largest structured growth opportunity,” the company said.
More importantly, more people are choosing MTN. Active data users rose by 9.3 percent to 55.7 million, which is equivalent to roughly one in every four Nigerians, assuming a population of about 242 million.
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Other ways MTN made money
Although data is now both king and the new oil for the telecom gaint, voice calls remain a major source of income. Voice revenue grew by 12.0 percent year-on-year to N993.46 billion.
While digital services revenue also increased by 20.0 percent to N58.54 billion, the company’s fintech business, however, recorded a 7.2 percent decline in revenue to N77.17 billion, a setback MTN attributed to the suspension of its airtime and data credit services.
Still, the underlying business showed strong momentum.
“However, the underlying mobile money business continued to progress, with revenue rising by approximately 132.0 percent and active wallets increasing by 1.3 million in H1 2026 to 5.0 million,” the report stated.
That matters because MTN is increasingly positioning itself as more than a telecom operator. The company is pushing deeper into financial services, and its long-term strategy points to a future where fintech becomes a standalone growth engine. In Ghana, MTN has already made significant progress in separating its fintech operations from its telecommunications business. Nigeria appears to be following a similar path.
The company said it is continuing the structural separation of its fintech business after receiving shareholder approval, with the process now awaiting regulatory approvals. If successful, it could unlock greater value from the fintech arm and accelerate MTN’s expansion in digital financial services.
For now, however, the biggest driver of MTN’s earnings remains the same thing that interrupted my writing: mobile data.
As the company enters the second half of 2026, it is betting that Nigerians will continue to consume more internet data, buy more smartphones, adopt home broadband, and increasingly use digital financial services.
In other words, the next time your data finishes unexpectedly and you recharge without thinking twice, you may be contributing, in a very small way, to the next trillion naira in MTN’s earnings.