NCC Opens Mobile Termination Rates Review to Public Scrutiny

The Nigerian Communications Commission has convened an Industry Stakeholder Consultative Forum on the determination of Mobile Termination Rates in Nigeria.

The forum scheduled for today, Tuesday June 16, 2026, at the Marriott Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, is open to all telecom licensees, industry stakeholders, and the general public, signals that Nigeria’s regulatory framework for interconnect pricing, a foundational but largely invisible component of what consumers pay for voice calls, is due for a formal reset.

What Mobile Termination Rates are and why they matter

Mobile Termination Rates are the charges that one network operator pays another to complete a call that originates on its own network but terminates on a competitor’s. When an MTN subscriber calls an Airtel number, for instance, MTN pays Airtel a termination fee for completing that call.

The rate at which this charge is set has direct implications for operator economics, competition dynamics, and ultimately, consumer tariffs.

Nigeria’s current local MTR of ₦3.90 per minute for generic 2G/3G/4G operators and ₦4.70 for newer LTE operators was determined in 2018 and has remained in place since, with the Commission stating at the time that the rate would continue to apply until a new determination was made.

That determination is now eight years overdue.

Why the timing matters

The macroeconomic environment in which that 2018 rate was set bears little resemblance to today’s. The naira has depreciated sharply over the intervening period, inflation has compounded significantly, and the cost structure of running a telecommunications network in Nigeria, covering equipment, energy, spectrum, and human capital,  has risen substantially in naira terms.

Industry observers have argued that the current termination rate of ₦3.90 per minute does not conform to economic realities, and that without an upward review of MTRs to align with market conditions, mobile network operators will face increasing difficulty sustaining operations.

At the same time, a rate revision is not without complexity. MTR levels influence competitive dynamics between large and small operators, between mobile and fixed networks, and between domestic and international traffic flows. Poorly calibrated rates can entrench dominant operators, disadvantage new entrants, or produce consumer pricing outcomes that regulators did not intend.

Nigeria has a history of applying asymmetric interconnect rates, setting higher termination rates for newer or smaller operators to account for their higher per-unit costs of network termination, while established operators carry lower rates reflecting their greater scale efficiency.

Whether that asymmetric approach is retained, revised, or replaced in the new determination will be one of the central questions the forum must address.

The broader regulatory context

The MTR forum comes at a moment of heightened regulatory activity across Nigeria’s telecoms sector. The NCC’s 109th Board Meeting, held on May 25, 2026, documented a sector in which 12,000 new network sites are being deployed, fibre-to-the-home connections have more than doubled in a single quarter, and 75 million subscribers have been offered compensation for substandard service quality.

Against that backdrop, getting interconnect pricing right is not a technical footnote, it is a structural decision that will shape how operators price services, invest in infrastructure, and compete for subscribers over the next decade.

The NCC has previously stated that in arriving at MTR determinations, the Commission carefully considers international experience, cost model results, the state of competition in the sector, and the Nigerian macroeconomic environment.

All four of those parameters have shifted materially since 2018, making today’s forum one of the more consequential regulatory consultations the Nigerian telecoms sector has seen in recent years.

What to watch

The key questions the forum will need to grapple with are straightforward even where the answers are not: Should the MTR rise to reflect the actual current cost of network termination in Nigeria?

If so, by how much, and on what timeline? How should the rate be structured to avoid entrenching market dominance while still providing viable economics for smaller operators?

And how does any rate adjustment interact with the NCC’s parallel agenda on tariff reform and consumer protection?

The NCC’s invitation to all telecom licensees, industry stakeholders, and the general public to participate reflects the Commission’s consultative approach to rate-setting, an approach whose credibility depends on the quality of the submissions received and the transparency with which the regulator documents its decision-making process in the final determination.

Nigeria’s phone call pricing framework has been running on 2018 settings in a 2026 economy. Today’s forum is the first formal step toward correcting that.

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