The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Karl Toriola, has urged Nigerians to adjust their mobile phone settings and application preferences to reduce data consumption, saying the company spent about ₦4.05tn on electricity in the preceding year.
Toriola said the high cost of powering telecommunications infrastructure, transportation and other operational requirements contributed to the cost of providing data services in Nigeria.
He spoke at MTN Nigeria’s *Data on Trial* experience in Abuja on Monday, an initiative designed to address public concerns about data consumption, pricing and alleged rapid depletion of subscribers’ bundles.
The MTN boss said telecommunications operators in Nigeria faced additional costs because they provided power and transportation to their network sites.
“Please, understand that in this country, as well as some other African countries, we are providing power and transportation to all our sites,” he said.
“The cost of electricity, for instance, is higher here than in the UK.”
Toriola said Nigerian operators deployed telecommunications equipment and technologies comparable to those used in Europe and the United States, including fourth-generation and fifth-generation networks.
He said the event was designed to demonstrate how phone settings, online activities and application preferences affected data consumption.
The chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Communications, Peter Akpatason, described the initiative as an opportunity to improve public understanding of data usage and address misconceptions about the telecommunications industry.
Akpatason said the demonstration would help subscribers understand how their data was consumed and the measures they could take to prevent avoidable depletion.
He also said the event challenged perceptions that data prices in Nigeria were higher than in other countries.
The lawmaker, however, acknowledged the need for further investment in the telecommunications sector to improve service quality.
….TikTok, WhatsApp blamed for fast data depletion
The General Manager, Network Performance and Quality Assurance at MTN Nigeria, Mike Ndukwe, identified video streaming, social media activities and automatic downloads as major factors responsible for rapid data consumption.
He said a 15-second TikTok video could consume between two megabytes and 20 megabytes, depending on its resolution.
Ndukwe explained that watching or downloading videos in high definition consumed more data than using standard-definition settings.
He added that 4G and 5G networks could increase data consumption when applications automatically selected higher video resolutions.
According to him, WhatsApp users could also experience rapid data depletion through automatic media downloads, status updates, files shared in groups and chat backups.
He advised subscribers to disable automatic media downloads, restrict background data usage and configure applications to download large files only when connected to Wi-Fi.
Ndukwe also recommended enabling data-saving features on TikTok and other social media platforms, reducing video resolution and disabling automatic playback where possible.
He said MTN provided tools, including the MyMTN application, to help customers monitor their data usage in real time and receive alerts.
The company also offers MTN FiberX as an unlimited data option for customers with high data requirements, subject to applicable terms.
Ndukwe maintained that rapid data depletion generally resulted from subscribers’ online activities and phone settings, urging users to understand how their devices and applications consumed data.
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