MTN Bets on Fibre and Fixed Wireless to Drive Home Broadband Growth in Nigeria, Ghana

MTN Group  is stepping up its push into home broadband, with fibre and fixed wireless access (FWA) emerging as key growth opportunities in Nigeria and Ghana.

The strategy emerged as a key focus during MTN Group’s 2026 interim results presentation, where Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said Nigeria is already seeing increased investment in both fixed wireless access and fibre, while Ghana could become a major home connectivity growth market over the next three years.

In Nigeria, MTN increased capital expenditure intensity to more than 20% during the first half of 2026 as it expanded its mobile network and pursued what Mupita described as a significant opportunity to connect more homes.

“We really pushed hard on capitalisation. The capex intensity in Nigeria was over 20% as we pursued growth in our mobile network, and pushing hard on the significant home opportunity that we spoke about at the Capital Markets Day that we see in Nigeria, pushing both a combination of fixed wireless access as well as fibre, where we see the use case and the investment case for fibre to be pretty strong.”

– Ralph Mupita, CEO, MTN Group

Rising Data Demand Supports the Home Broadband Push

The focus on home connectivity comes as data accounts for a growing share of MTN’s business. Group data revenue grew 29.2% during the first half of 2026 and now contributes close to half of total service revenue.

Across its markets, active data subscribers grew faster than the overall customer base, while total data traffic reached 14,338 petabytes during the period.

Nigeria and Ghana also continue to show the scale of that demand. MTN said its average Nigerian customer used around 14.8GB of data, compared with approximately 19GB in Ghana.

Ghana Emerges as Another Home Connectivity Market

Ghana has become one of MTN’s strongest-performing markets, recording 32% service revenue growth during the period and an EBITDA margin of 61.8%.

The company now sees home connectivity as an important part of the market’s longer-term growth.

“The big growth vector for Ghana going forward is we’ll move from mobility to home. I’m not talking about the next quarter or two, but more structurally, the next three years, is we see a significant home opportunity in Ghana that is addressable from our point of view. And it’ll come in two forms, obviously, fibre and fixed wireless access.”

– Ralph Mupita, CEO, MTN Group

MTN has already been expanding its fibre footprint in Ghana, and Mupita said access to additional 5G spectrum could give the operator more room to grow its fixed wireless services.

“We’ve been pushing fibre quite a bit now because we haven’t had 5G spectrum. So, the potential for getting decent quantums of low-band spectrum as well as the mid-band spectrum is very attractive to us, just given the significance of the home opportunity and balancing between fixed wireless access and fibre.”

– Ralph Mupita, CEO, MTN Group

The combination gives MTN two different routes into the home broadband market, with fibre and fixed wireless access forming part of its network expansion plans in both Ghana and Nigeria.

Satellites, AI and Handset Costs Remain on MTN’s Radar

Home connectivity was also among a wider set of technology and infrastructure developments MTN said it was monitoring as it moves into the second half of 2026.

Mupita pointed to low-Earth orbit satellite partnerships, developments in artificial intelligence and rising chipset costs as areas the group is watching.

On satellite connectivity, he said partnerships could play a role but that MTN’s approach would differ across its markets.

“We do believe that there’s a place for partnerships, and we do believe that one has to take a market-by-market approach on how we deal with that,” Ralph Mupita, CEO, MTN Group, said.

The group is also monitoring developments in AI models and the cost of deploying them, alongside the effect of growing global demand for chips on smartphone affordability.

“Chipset pricing is really impacting handset affordability,” Mupita said, adding that MTN was looking at financing solutions to help address the challenge.

For MTN, these developments sit alongside continued investment in its mobile networks, fibre and fixed wireless infrastructure as it pursues growth across its 19 markets.