What The Hell America!

In the sprawling electronic market of Lagos’ Computer Village, an item is flying off the shelves: the Starlink kit.

These satellite dishes, with their distinctive white faces and plug-and-play simplicity, represent more than just easy internet availability in Nigeria. They symbolize a technological coup in Africa’s most populous nation, where terrestrial broadband or wireless options are unreliable or inaccessible.

“I have about 20 pieces in the store, but I’m sure they will go before today ends or at the latest tomorrow morning,” Quadri AbdulFatai, a local electronics vendor who claims to have sold more than a thousand units in just 13 months, told Rest of World. “Starlink is very hot now.”

In January 2023, Nigeria became the first African market that Starlink entered. Two years later, it now ranks second among internet service providers, which are classified separately from large telecom players by the Nigerian authorities. With over 65,500 users at the end of the third quarter last year, Starlink is second only to 16-year-old Lagos-based ISP Spectranet, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s telecom regulator. 

At current growth rates, analysts predict Starlink will become Nigeria’s top internet service provider by mid-2026.

The secret to Starlink’s meteoric rise lies in a simple market reality: Nigerians are desperate for reliable, high-speed internet, which local providers have consistently failed to deliver, according to Temidayo Oniosun, managing director at Space in Africa, a market intelligence company focusing on the continent’s space and satellite industry.

Telecom companies and traditional ISPs in Nigeria suffer from frequent outages, sluggish speeds, and spotty coverage, especially in rural areas where terrestrial infrastructure is limited or nonexistent.

“Nigerians want high-speed and reliable internet, and Starlink’s technology offers that better than anyone else,” Oniosun told Rest of World. “That’s why it is growing at an incredible speed. While the services aren’t the cheapest, launching with different pricing in different African markets shows that Starlink understands the markets.”

Starlink has made investments in building infrastructure in Nigeria. It has built a base station in Lagos and plans to add facilities in neighboring Abeokuta and Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub. These stations will enable the company to beam low-latency internet directly to its rapidly growing user base throughout the country. Low latency is the ability of a network to respond with minimal delay.

Starlink’s success has unsettled competitors. When the company increased subscription prices last October, local operators cried foul, accusing regulator NCC of applying double standards by ignoring their requests for tariff reviews.

The regulator eventually granted local providers a 50% tariff increase in January, but customer perception had been damaged. 

The regulator has fostered a fair and enabling environment that empowers all licensed operators, including Starlink, “to compete, innovate, and grow in response to market needs,” an NCC spokesperson told Rest of World.

The regulator has fostered a fair and enabling environment that empowers all licensed operators, including Starlink, “to compete, innovate, and grow in response to market needs,” an NCC spokesperson told Rest of World.

The regulator has licensed over 27 satellite-based communications services providers and issued over 90 landing rights to space segment operators, which include established providers like Eutelsat, SES, Viasat, and YahClick.

“In recent times, the commission has observed growing interest from both established global players and new entrants (especially those providing emerging satellite services) seeking to enter the Nigerian market,” the spokesperson said. “This level of engagement reflects growing investor confidence in Nigeria’s digital economy and the enabling environment provided by the commission.”

Nigeria has 241 licensed ISPs, of which only 124 had active users as of the third quarter of 2024, collectively serving more than 300,000 subscribers, according to NCC data.

Starlink’s arrival has been nothing short of catastrophic for incumbents. Market leader Spectranet lost 8,428 subscribers between the last quarter of 2023 and the third quarter of 2024, while Tizeti lost about 700 in the same period.

While the losses appear modest, they are significant in the context of the small size of the market served by Nigeria’s ISPs. The internet landscape is more dominated by mobile network operators MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile, which collectively serve 132.4 million subscribers, providing both internet access as well as traditional phone services.

The playing field is fundamentally uneven, said Temitope Osunrinde, chief marketing officer at Tizeti. The challenges for local operators include buying spectrum and building local capacity, hiring talent, and paying multiple taxes. If digging for fiber, they have to contend with multiple local government right-of-way permits and also area goons.

“You can’t compare Starlink with local companies because they don’t have to set up local capacity, nor hire and set up an office,” Osunrinde told Rest of World.

Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), believes Starlink’s success reflects not a failure of local providers but “a challenging operating environment, which includes issues such as multiple taxes, multiple regulations, high right-of-way charges, infrastructure vandalism, and the rising cost of foreign exchange.”

Yet for ordinary Nigerians, these industry complaints hold little water compared with the tangible benefits of reliable connectivity. “For me, it was less speed and more concern about constant internet blackouts during meetings,” Olumide Lewis, a Lagos-based tech worker who recently installed Starlink, told Rest of World. “Since we bought our Starlink, we have had some peace of mind. We don’t spend our time thinking about the bad internet again because everything just works.”

Starlink’s march appears unstoppable. Besides direct distribution via its website, the company distributed its kits through Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce platform. By late 2024, it had reached full capacity in major Nigerian cities, including Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, creating a flourishing secondary market of resellers who continue to import the coveted hardware at premium prices.

Starlink’s rapid growth has raised national security concerns.

“It’s very concerning if we allow a foreign company, knowing who owns it, to have that much power over critical communication infrastructure,” Oniosun said. “If Starlink continues at this pace, and, in a couple of years, they become the leading ISP, servicing hundreds of thousands of people and businesses, what happens when they decide to cut access?”

Starlink did not respond to Rest of World’s request for comment.

Nigerian officials appear cognizant of these risks, and critical institutions avoid using Starlink’s network, Yoosuf Temitope, technical adviser at state-owned Nigeria Communications Satellite Limited, told Rest of World. NigCommSat provides satellite internet to major government agencies and also serves private individuals and businesses.

“The military is not meant to ride on Starlink because its data would go to the United States, which can easily mine and cook the data,” he said. “Starlink has its business model and strategy, and we have ours.”

Nevertheless, Nigeria’s “open skies” policies continue to welcome foreign rivals. And as Starlink’s dishes enter more African homes, local providers face an existential choice: adapt or perish. Tizeti is responding by adding fiber internet to its wireless offering, which had been its mainstay for 11 of its 12 years of existence, joining other wireless brands like Spectranet that are pushing their fiber services more aggressively. Others may be forced to merge or exit the market entirely, Oniosun said.