- TikTok Becomes MTN Ghana’s Biggest Data Consumer as Video Traffic Reshapes Telecom Market
Ghana’s accelerating shift towards video-led digital consumption is reshaping the economics of the telecommunications industry, as MTN Ghana identifies TikTok as the single biggest consumer of mobile data on its network and prepares a sharp expansion in network capacity to keep pace with rising traffic.
Stephen Blewett, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, said changing consumer behaviour particularly the rapid adoption of short-form video is playing an increasingly important role in the volume of data moving across the operator’s network.
“TikTok is the biggest consumer of data on our network,” Mr Blewett said.
The disclosure provides a useful window into the transformation taking place across Ghana’s telecom market. Mobile phones are no longer primarily communication devices used for calls and text messages. They have become platforms for entertainment, banking, commerce, advertising, content creation and social interaction, fundamentally changing what customers demand from telecom infrastructure.
As consumers migrate from conventional voice services towards internet-based applications, data becomes an increasingly important revenue source. But the same transition also creates significant capital requirements because video places considerably more pressure on network capacity than traditional voice or text-based services.
MTN Ghana’s recent performance illustrates the scale of that transition. In 2025, the company’s data revenue increased by about 48% year-on-year, while active data subscribers rose 13.70% to 19.90 million. Data traffic expanded by more than 55%, with average monthly consumption reaching 14.70GB per subscriber.
Those numbers point to a market where the important story is no longer simply how many people have mobile internet access, but how intensively they use it.
Streaming, social media and other bandwidth-heavy applications are increasingly responsible for that growth. TikTok is particularly significant because its core product is continuous video.
Unlike older social platforms built largely around text, static photographs or manually selected content, TikTok continuously recommends and automatically delivers video to users. That structure encourages longer sessions and can consume data rapidly, particularly where smartphones stream at higher resolutions.
The result is a powerful economic loop. More video consumption drives higher demand for data bundles and supports telecom revenue. Higher data traffic, however, simultaneously requires operators to invest more heavily in spectrum, fibre, towers and radio equipment if they are to prevent congestion and declining service quality.
MTN Ghana is responding with a substantial increase in infrastructure deployment. The company plans to build at least 500 additional network sites in 2026, compared with 50 sites in 2025 and roughly 25 to 30 in 2024.
“Now, we are moving to 500 sites in a single year. And why are we doing that? Because it gives a better quality of service to our customers,” Mr Blewett said.
That jump shows how quickly the economics of mobile networks are changing. A telecom operator can add subscribers without immediately building the same proportion of new infrastructure if average usage remains modest. Once each customer begins consuming significantly more video, however, traffic can rise much faster than subscriber numbers.
That is increasingly the challenge facing Ghana’s telecom industry. Each additional hour spent on TikTok, YouTube, Netflix or another streaming platform must ultimately be carried across physical telecommunications infrastructure.
Digital consumption may appear intangible on a smartphone screen, but the network supporting it is capital intensive. This helps explain why debates about data pricing cannot be separated completely from the cost of infrastructure.
Consumers naturally want cheaper internet access. Operators, meanwhile, must continuously expand networks to accommodate the very increase in consumption that cheaper data can encourage.
The relationship becomes more complicated because declining unit prices do not necessarily mean household spending on data will fall.
A user may receive substantially more gigabytes for the same amount of money, but if applications automatically consume higher volumes through video, cloud backups, software updates and background processes, the bundle may still be exhausted quickly.
Mr Blewett has previously pushed back against allegations that operators cause bundles to disappear artificially.
“There’s zero incentive for MTN to steal data from you. Because it will just chase people away. It’s not something we do; it’s not part of our values. So there’s a lot that we have to do as customers. We have to be very responsible,” he said.
The point highlights another dimension of Ghana’s digital transition: consumer literacy has to develop alongside network infrastructure.
Many smartphone users may be unaware that applications can consume data even when they are not actively being used.
Automatic video playback, app updates, photo and video synchronisation, cloud backups and higher display resolutions can all increase consumption.
For households operating on relatively tight budgets, understanding those settings becomes increasingly important.
But Ghana’s rising data usage is not merely a cost story. It is also evidence of deeper participation in the digital economy. Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram increasingly serve as low-cost commercial infrastructure for small businesses, informal traders and content creators.
A retailer that cannot afford television, radio or billboard advertising can potentially reach thousands of customers through short videos produced on a smartphone.
For young entrepreneurs in particular, social platforms are becoming marketing, distribution and customer-acquisition channels. This means rising data consumption can support economic activity in ways that conventional telecom indicators may not fully capture.
The same gigabyte that one consumer uses for entertainment may be used by another to market clothing, sell food, advertise accommodation, manage customers or produce content that generates income. That makes network investment increasingly important to economic competitiveness.
Poor mobile connectivity can now disrupt commerce in much the same way unreliable electricity or transport infrastructure can. The challenge for policymakers is therefore to encourage investment while keeping access affordable.
Aggressive price regulation without sufficient regard for investment incentives could weaken the ability of operators to expand infrastructure. But high data costs can restrict participation in an economy that is becoming increasingly digital.
The policy objective has to be a market capable of delivering both. MTN’s planned 500-site rollout suggests the operator expects current data growth to continue rather than moderate.
That expectation is supported by the structure of the market. The company ended 2025 with more than 31 million mobile subscribers and 19.90 million active data customers, leaving both deeper consumption among existing users and further subscriber conversion as potential sources of growth.
The next phase of Ghana’s telecom expansion may therefore be driven less by putting SIM cards into new hands and more by increasing how much each connected customer does online.
Network quality, capacity and speed become more important as video replaces lighter forms of digital communication. It also means the biggest threat to customer experience may increasingly be congestion rather than basic coverage.
TikTok becoming the largest source of data consumption on MTN Ghana’s network is therefore more than an interesting observation about social-media preferences.
It captures a structural change in the country’s digital economy. Ghana’s telecom market was built initially around voice. Its next phase is increasingly being shaped by video, algorithms and bandwidth.
For telecom operators, that creates another runway for growth — but one requiring sustained capital expenditure. For consumers, it brings richer digital services but potentially higher overall consumption.
And for policymakers, the central question will be whether Ghana can expand the physical infrastructure behind its digital economy quickly enough to ensure that growing demand for connectivity improves productivity and opportunity rather than simply creating slower networks and larger household data bills.
