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T2 Mobile, the Nigerian carrier formerly known as 9mobile and now controlled by a group chaired by tycoon Thomas Etuh, has stopped adding customers more than a year after its rebrand, leaving it with less than 2% of the country's mobile market.
The operator had 3.61 million subscribers at the end of September, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission. It added no net lines that month, while the industry as a whole added 2.93 million. MTN Nigeria took 2.09 million of those, Airtel Africa's Nigerian unit 619,000 and Globacom 218,000.
T2's base grew just 3% between May and September, from 3.5 million, while total lines in Nigeria rose 5.7% to 200.1 million. Its market share slipped to 1.81% from about 1.85% in May.
A rebrand that lifted numbers, then stalled
The company rebranded as T2 at a launch in Lagos in August 2025. Chief Executive Officer Obafemi Banigbe described it at the time as "not just a logo change but a total evolution."
The new name brought an early bounce. Subscribers rose from a low of 2.44 million in June 2025 to 2.73 million in July and 3.11 million by September 2025. Growth then slowed through the first half of this year before flattening.
Customers have also been leaving through number porting. In the first 10 months of 2025, 28,173 subscribers ported out of the network and 87 ported in.
The $3 billion plan
LH Telecoms Ltd., the investor group chaired by Etuh, took control in July 2024 after the Nigerian Communications Commission and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission approved its deal. The group received new shares equal to 95.5% of the operator in exchange for fresh capital, and Etuh became chairman of the reconstituted board.
The new owners set out plans to invest $3 billion over four years in a network refresh, under a four-phase recovery program the company calls stabilization, modernization, transformation and growth. T2 has not disclosed how much of that money has been spent.
The operator has taken steps to shore up its service. The commission approved a national roaming agreement with MTN in July 2025 that took effect in October for three years, and T2 signed a systems modernization deal with Knot Solutions in September 2025. In the commission's fourth-quarter 2025 tests, T2 recorded average rural download speeds of 24.9 megabits per second, ahead of MTN at 15.8, Airtel at 10.6 and Globacom at 9.5.
A troubled history
The network launched in 2008 as Etisalat Nigeria, backed by the United Arab Emirates' Etisalat group. In 2013 it borrowed $1.2 billion from a syndicate of 13 Nigerian banks, and when it struggled to repay the loan, the Emirati parent withdrew in 2017 and the business was renamed 9mobile.
Etuh is the founder of the Tak Group of Companies and chairman of fertilizer maker Notore Chemical Industries Plc. He previously chaired Unity Bank Plc, Veritas Kapital Assurance Plc and Lighthouse Capital Ltd., and has worked across agriculture, fertilizer, mining, banking, power and aviation for more than three decades.
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