Airtel Nigeria Passes 17,000 Sites, Adds 1,000 5G Stations in 2026

Airtel Nigeria has added more than 1,000 5G sites in 2026 alone, pushing its national footprint past 17,000 sites, CEO Dinesh Balsingh announced at the launch of the Airtel Open Network platform in Lagos.

The figure follows a larger build-out in the previous financial year. "During the last financial year, Airtel Nigeria added more than 1,050 new sites and has surpassed 17,000 sites nationwide. This year, 2026 alone, Airtel has added more than 1,000 5G sites to date, expanding access to high-speed connectivity across the country," Balsingh said.

For practitioners, the numbers translate into roughly two new sites per day sustained across two consecutive reporting periods. The expansion forms part of Airtel's broader investment programme to widen coverage and raise network capacity across Nigeria, where data consumption and demand for faster connectivity continue to climb.

What does the Open Network tool actually do?

The new feature lives inside the My Airtel Africa application. It lets subscribers view network infrastructure around their locations and report connectivity problems directly to the operator.

Specifically, the tool shows:

• 4G and 5G site locations near the user
• Areas where infrastructure upgrades are under way
• Planned sites within a 500-metre radius of the subscriber's position
• A feedback channel for reporting network performance issues

Airtel said the customer feedback feeds its technical teams, which can then investigate connectivity problems and pinpoint areas needing improvement.

Balsingh framed the initiative as a trust-building exercise. "Trust grows when customers can see what is happening and know that their concerns are being heard. With Open Network, we are giving customers greater visibility into our network and a more direct way to tell us where their experience falls short," he said.

He acknowledged that conventional complaint channels — call centres and physical service outlets — sometimes fail to deliver precise information about the location and nature of network faults. The digital platform complements those channels by giving engineers more specific, location-aware feedback.

The CEO was careful to separate the tool's capabilities from vendor-style promises. The platform will not automatically repair faults or eliminate outages, he cautioned, and sustained infrastructure investment remains necessary to lift service quality. He also noted that performance varies with indoor coverage, building structures, handset specifications and localised congestion — a caveat engineers will recognise from any RF planning brief.

First among 14 markets, with regulatory backing

Airtel said Nigeria is the first of its 14 operating markets in Africa to receive this level of consumer-facing network transparency.

The launch drew the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr Aminu Maida, alongside industry stakeholders and corporate executives. Maida commended the initiative, describing it as a development that could complement the NCC's own efforts to improve transparency and consumer confidence across the sector.

The regulator's position carries weight for operators. Maida said the commission's assessment of service quality would continue to rest on evidence and applicable industry standards, and he added that operators must aim beyond minimum regulatory requirements — a signal that QoS scrutiny will not relax.

Retail and digital service layers keep growing

Beyond radio infrastructure, Airtel is widening its customer service footprint. The company operates more than 225 premium experience stores and plans to raise that number to 500. It also runs more than 9,000 exclusive shops and over 73,000 retail agents nationwide — a distribution scale that few competitors in the market can match.

The Open Network launch builds on an earlier digital service. In March 2025, Airtel introduced an AI-powered spam alert service, which flagged more than 9.6 million suspected spam messages within its first two months, according to Balsingh.

Airtel said it will follow the launch with a nationwide awareness campaign, using digital platforms, retail outlets and traditional media to teach subscribers how to use the Open Network feature.