In today post, I will be writing on Why “Unlimited Data” isn’t really Unlimited. But to really fully understand it, you will need to read our previous post by clicking this LINK. If you have not read the first part, you can read it HERE. Now this is the continuation of the second part. Let me try to break it down. This next part is a bit technical and involves some calculations. So if you don’t want to dive into the numbers feel free to skip. But if you want to see whether Nigerian internet providers are really struggling or just milking profits from us stick with me.
Lets take bandwidth like a highway for internet data, the wider the highway the more cars can pass through it at once. Which means, the more bandwidth an ISP has, the faster and smoother your internet experience is going to be. There’s a common misconception about mb (megabyte) is not the same as MB (megabits). Megabytes refers to the size of data while megabit or megabits per second refers to the internet speed which is how fast data moves. Now in 1 MB we have 8 mgabits.
So if for instance, your internet speed is 8 megabits per second, it will take you 1 second to download 1 MB (megabyte) of data. Now this is where things get pretty interesting. Nigerian internet providers don’t generate their own internet bandwidth. They actually purchase bandwidth from undersea cable operators like MainOne, Glo-1 and ACE. With this purchased, it is certainly they can’t be able to provide unlimited data cus they are limited.
Now these cables connect Nigeria to the global internet and our ISPs buy bandwidth from them before reselling it to you. Now the main question is how much does this actually cost because, if you can know how much it cost, we can compare it to how much they sell it to us and then we’ll be able to determine if this bandwidth is actually too expensive or if there is something shady going on.
Now lets dive a little further. As I said in the beginning, this part is a bit technical. Hope you know Bandwidth is calculated in something called STM1 which stands for (Synchronous Transport Model level One) and with STM1 you get a speed of 155 megabits per second. In Lagos STM1 cost around $300. Remember that if your internet speed is 8 megabits per second it will take you 1 second to download 1 MB of data. So if we add an internet speed of 1 megabits per second in a month, we’ll be able to generate and transfer data of 324 GB per month.
Now remember that STM1 delivers about 155 megabits per second that means that in 1 month STM1 will deliver about 50,220 GB that also means that 50,220 GB cost $300. Now in order to get the actual price of 1 GB we’d have to divide $300 by 50,220 gig and when we do that you get a total of 6 which is equals to 94 naira and that means that one gig actually cost our network providers 94 naira.
Now typically in Nigeria. one gig cost about 500 to 1,000 naira. Let’s take an average of 800 naira. If we do the calculation, we can see that they make a profit of 733%. so if Nigerian ISPs make a profit of 733% and they can afford to sell unlimited data at a fair price but choose not to. Are they really struggling or are they just enjoying their profits while we suffer? Well I guess we’ll never know.
Lastly, the fourth reason why we as Nigerians might never get true unlimited data is because of network congestion. Even if Nigerian network providers suddenly decide to offer unlimited data, there’s still another problem and that is network congestion. To explain network congestion, Let’s say you live in a compound with one well for water and only two people fetch water from it. I guessed the water will last longer as there is no problem at all. But if 50 people start fetching water from that well at the same time before you know it the water will finish.
That’s exactly the same thing that will happens with our network providers. The more people we have using data, the worse the speed gets. A report from NCC reveals that Nigeria has over 160 mobile internet users but our network providers hasn’t expanded their network capacity enough to support these users and yet they keep selling SIM cards every day.
There’s actually a fix to this one. And the fix is for ISP to improve the infrastructure. This would fix the problem. But will it be improved? When will it be improved? I don’t know. Having said all this you might begin to wonder but how then can companies like Starlink offer unlimited data and our network providers can’t offer unlimited data? I will talk about this on my next post.
If you find this article helpful, feel free to save it for later. Share it with a fellow Nigerian and as usual stick with me and let’s keep ourselves in a Techy manner. See you on the next post cheers.
Kindly go through this post via this link to read how to get cheap internet data from MTN
