After nearly five years of delays and challenges in Nigeria’s telecom sector, 9mobile has finally received the green light to launch national roaming services using MTN’s network infrastructure.
The approval, granted by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), will allow 9mobile to go live with this arrangement in June 2025. This will enable its continued existence in a market where its subscriber base has shrunk to 1.72%.
Back in August 2020, 9mobile and MTN tested a limited national roaming pilot for three months. It ended without a commercial rollout, leaving the agreement to gather dust while 9mobile continued to lose users.
Fast forward to 2025, and the urgency has escalated. The operator’s market share has collapsed from 6.6% in 2020 to a historic low this April, and without this partnership, 9mobile would likely become irrelevant.
9mobile subscribers will now be able to make calls, send SMS, and access data through MTN’s infrastructure in areas where 9mobile’s network doesn’t exist or is unreliable, enabling the telco’s sustainability.
For 9mobile, it means coverage without the cost. Instead of building out its own infrastructure, which is capital-intensive, it can now plug directly into MTN’s far-reaching network.
This puts the company in a position to stabilise, and possibly even expand, if it can market its services properly. A telecom executive told TechCabal, “The number three spot is still very much in play… if they bundle smartly, they can start to claw back users.”
That “number three spot” refers to the telecoms hierarchy, where Globacom, currently holding 11.9% share, has seen its subscriber base fall to 20.6 million. It’s a window of opportunity for 9mobile, though only if it can regain public trust.
MTN, on the other hand, isn’t doing this out of generosity. In exchange for hosting 9mobile, MTN gets partial access to 9mobile’s underutilised spectrum holdings in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2100 MHz bands.
These frequencies are not trivial assets. The 900 MHz band, for example, performs well over long distances and through thick walls, ideal for rural areas. The 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands, meanwhile, offer the high capacity needed in crowded cities.
With over 84 million subscribers, MTN will use the spectrum to ease congestion, improve quality of service, and maintain its competitive edge. But it won’t have free rein. Regulatory limitations will apply. “It’s a calculated bet for both operators,” the same telecom executive noted. “The NCC will likely impose restrictions to ensure fair use and prevent market distortions.”
Beyond the companies involved, this development fits into a wider agenda at the NCC. With the cost of infrastructure deployment rising and operators reluctant to invest in overlapping networks, the Commission has been pushing for greater infrastructure sharing. Agreements like this, national roaming and spectrum-sharing, are central to that.
While both 9mobile and MTN have not commented publicly, the importance of the approval is that it could entirely change market dynamics. It may also serve as a template for other struggling operators on how to stay afloat in a space where giants are topping.
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