Globacom, popularly referred to as Glo, Nigeria’s third-largest telecommunications operator, has seen its market share fall to an all-time low of 11.9% in April 2025, in keeping with the newest knowledge from the Nigerian Communications Fee (NCC). The operator misplaced 108,393 subscribers in only one month, dropping from 20.7 million in March to twenty.6 million in April.
This decline is the end result of years of operational, service high quality, and governance challenges that now threaten each competitors within the sector and the standard of service Nigerian subscribers obtain.
Globacom’s present struggles are a stark distinction to its early years. The corporate pioneered per-second billing and free SIM distribution, as soon as forcing market leaders to rethink their methods and pricing. Nonetheless, the final decade has been marked by stagnation, with Glo dropping its modern edge and changing into more and more reactive in a quickly evolving market. The current plunge in market share is especially dramatic on condition that, as lately as early 2024, Glo claimed 27% of the market with over 60 million subscribers— numbers that have been later revised down after the NCC enforced stricter definitions for lively strains, exposing a 69% drop in its true subscriber base.
A key driver of Glo’s decline is its persistent quality-of-service points. Between January and Could 2025, Globacom suffered 45 main community outages—second solely to 9mobile’s 63 outages—in keeping with Uptime, an incident monitoring platform on the NCC web site, which tracks main community outages among the many 4 telecom operators.
These outages, typically attributable to fibre cuts, vandalism, and energy failures, have led to extended service disruptions, particularly on the Glo community. One evident instance recorded by Uptime was an outage attributable to gear theft throughout 5 states on Could 21, 2025. It lasted over eight hours and disrupted knowledge, voice, SMS, and USSD providers. In one other, a fibre lower in Adamawa and Taraba on Could 20 remained unresolved for over 4 days.
Whereas community outages are widespread throughout all operators as a result of Nigeria’s frail telecom infrastructure, in comparison with rivals like MTN, which generally resolve outages inside 1 to three hours, Globacom’s sluggish incident response has eroded buyer belief and satisfaction.
Buyer dissatisfaction with Globacom’s providers has change into more and more pronounced, with widespread complaints about unreliable connectivity, sluggish web speeds, and poor buyer help. Consumer suggestions on totally different social media platforms constantly displays rising frustration, prompting many subscribers to desert the community in favour of extra reliable options, even at increased prices. MTN Nigeria, the nation’s largest operator, added almost 3 million new customers between January and April 2025, boosting its subscriber base to 90.5 million. These defections are mirrored in porting knowledge: in April alone, 1,233 customers left Globacom for different networks—the second-highest determine after 9mobile, which misplaced 5,042 customers. Every extended outage not solely erodes buyer belief but additionally inflicts monetary and reputational harm in a market the place digital reliability is non-negotiable.
Globacom’s shrinking market share has profound implications for competitors in Nigeria’s telecom sector. With MTN and Airtel now commanding 86% of the market mixed, the chance of a duopoly is rising. This focus may scale back aggressive stress to innovate and preserve costs low, finally harming customers. For a lot of Nigerians, particularly these in rural and underserved areas the place Glo as soon as offered an reasonably priced various, the corporate’s decline means fewer selections and the potential for increased prices and deteriorating service high quality.
Furthermore, broader infrastructure and safety challenges, together with rampant fibre cuts, vandalism, and energy instability, are testing the sector’s resilience. Whereas all operators face these points, Globacom’s slower response and underinvestment in infrastructure have left it particularly weak.
Underlying Globacom’s operational struggles is a deeper disaster of company governance. For years, the corporate was tightly managed by founder Mike Adenuga, with little separation between possession and administration. In late 2024, underneath regulatory stress, Globacom appointed Ahmad Farroukh—a seasoned telecom govt with stints at MTN and Smile Communications—as its first formal CEO and started constituting a board of administrators. Nonetheless, Farroukh resigned after only one month, reportedly as a result of clashes with the corporate’s centralised, founder-driven tradition and lack of operational autonomy.
“Globacom’s drawback is generally company governance, not due to an absence of subscribers,” mentioned Wole Adetuyi, CEO of Swift Phone Community. “What it does is to make folks assume that the telecom enterprise can’t be effectively performed by Nigerian executives, which isn’t true. There are various profitable Nigerian firms within the telecom business.”
This management vacuum has left Globacom rudderless at a time when decisive motion is required. The NCC’s current audit, which uncovered regulatory lapses in SIM registration and knowledge safety, has solely intensified scrutiny on Globacom’s governance and compliance practices.
If Globacom is to regain relevance, it should urgently handle its governance disaster, spend money on infrastructure, and put buyer expertise on the coronary heart of its technique. In any other case, its record-low market share could solely be the start of a deeper slide—one that would reshape Nigeria’s telecom panorama for years to come back.