Digital Transformation and Service Delivery in the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry

This study examined the effect of digital transformation on service delivery in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. An ex-post facto design was adopted, using annual secondary data from 2001 to 2024 (24 observations) sourced from the Nigerian Communications Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Bureau of Statistics. Service delivery was proxied by a composite Service Delivery Quality Score, which averaged 0.1714. Digital transformation was captured by mobile phone penetration, internet penetration, mobile money transaction and telecommunication network coverage, with literacy rate as a control. Unit root tests revealed a mixture of I(0) and I(1) series. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag bounds test confirmed cointegration (F = 4.8293), exceeding the 1% upper bound of 4.15. Long-run estimates showed that mobile phone penetration (β = 0.1598, p = 0.0171), telecommunication network coverage (β = 0.0119, p = 0.0000) and literacy rate (β = 0.0591, p = 0.0082) significantly improved service delivery. Internet penetration (β = −0.0503, p = 0.2750) and mobile money transaction (β = −0.1473, p = 0.2782) were negative and insignificant. The error correction term (−0.6007, p = 0.0000) indicated that about 60.07% of disequilibrium is corrected annually, and the short-run model explained 89.58% of the variation in service delivery. Diagnostic tests confirmed normal residuals, no serial correlation, homoskedasticity and parameter stability. The study concluded that infrastructural reach, rather than usage intensity, sustains service quality. It recommended prioritised investment in network coverage, deeper mobile access and targeted digital literacy programmes.