Ghana‘s fixed broadband speeds are rising faster than those of five other West African markets, but fiber connections still reach less than 1 percent of the population, according to new data from Ookla.
The findings cover six West African markets between 2023 and the first half of 2026. Ghana posted the broadest download speed gains in the group.
Speed gains and the 2025 inflection point
Key changes in Ookla’s data for Ghana include:
- Median fixed download speed rose 69 percent, from 31.17 megabits per second (Mbps) in 2023 to 52.78 Mbps in the first half of 2026.
- Bottom 10th percentile download speed more than doubled, from 3.03 Mbps to 7.13 Mbps.
- In the third quarter of 2025, median upload speed jumped from 22.60 Mbps to 49.16 Mbps and latency fell from 34.6 milliseconds to 12.6 milliseconds.
Ookla attributes the third-quarter shift to the growing share of fiber connections, which offer symmetrical upload and download speeds unlike older broadband technologies.
The recent landing of Meta-backed 2Africa subsea cables in Accra, Ghana, is expected to add further capacity, potentially improving performance again in coming quarters.
A two-operator market with limited reach
Ghana’s fixed broadband sector is a duopoly. MTN and Telecel control the market, according to Ghana’s National Communications Authority, which counted 261,938 fiber subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 18.4 percent from a year earlier.
Fixed wireless access accounts for fewer than 1,500 connections nationwide. Ghana had 42.87 million mobile subscriptions in the same period, a penetration rate of 127 percent.
Fiber’s reach is confined mostly to urban and suburban pockets, limiting how much of the population can benefit from the speed gains Ookla documented. With only two major fiber providers, Ghana lacks the kind of multi-operator, infrastructure-sharing push seen in neighboring markets.
Regional comparison
Ghana’s trajectory sits in the middle of a region moving at different speeds. Nigeria posted the most consistent quarter-over-quarter improvement, with median download speeds rising 2.55 times to 34.47 Mbps as fiber subscribers roughly tripled between late 2024 and June 2026.
Côte d’Ivoire had the fastest median speeds overall, reaching nearly 61 Mbps, though gains for its fastest users have plateaued. Senegal saw slower long-term growth but a sudden acceleration in 2026, after dominant operator Sonatel overhauled its residential fiber pricing and speed tiers in February.
Smaller markets Togo and Gabon are earlier in their fiber build-outs, with progress there driven more by regulatory intervention than organic demand.
Unlike Côte d’Ivoire, which is layering in 5G and satellite-based coverage for rural areas, and Nigeria, where regulators are pushing operators to share infrastructure and cut right-of-way fees, Ghana’s public strategy for closing its urban-rural gap is less defined in the Ookla research.
Satellite competition
Traditional internet service providers (ISPs) across the region also face a new competitor: Starlink. SpaceX‘s satellite service is now licensed in more than 28 African countries and has an estimated half a million subscribers on the continent, with Nigeria alone accounting for over 66,000 as of mid-2025.
Starlink is already available in Ghana, offering an alternative for customers outside fiber’s urban footprint. Some operators elsewhere in the region have responded by partnering with satellite providers rather than competing with them. Orange Côte d’Ivoire and Sonatel in Senegal have both launched hybrid satellite-fiber products aimed at rural customers.
Ookla’s report does not indicate a similar move yet from MTN or Telecel in Ghana.
