A new report from MyBroadband Insights has named MTN the best overall mobile network in the country for the first quarter of 2024, with Vodacom hot on its heels in second place.
7,197 unique devices were recorded performing a collective 285,839 speed tests on the MyBroadband speed test platform all over South Africa from 1 January 2024 to 31 March 2024 to arrive at these findings. These speed tests, together with drive tests carried out in cities, towns and on the country’s main roads provide the basis for MyBroadband Insights’ findings and offer real-world performance metrics of South Africa’s mobile network operators.
MTN risks running out of award shelf space
With average download and upload speeds of 82.48Mbps and 24.03Mbps respectively, an average network latency of 24ms, and a Network Quality Score of 9.66 out of 10, MTN takes the cake for best overall mobile network in the country.
More specifically, the operator recorded wins as the best mobile network in most of the country’s major metropolitan areas, including Cape Town, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay but lost to Vodacom as the best network in Johannesburg.
Vodacom wasn’t far behind first place with average download and upload speeds of 77.45Mbps and 14.74Mbps, an average latency of 30ms, and a Network Quality Score of 8.14 out of 10. MyBroadband Insights’ report notes that average network performance for LTE and 5G networks are calculated separately and that Vodacom’s 5G network ranked better than MTN’s. This could explain Vodacom’s standout victory in Johannesburg.
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The network performance of Cell C, Telkom, and Rain was also recorded and, unsurprisingly, they didn’t do as well. Cell C and Telkom obtained average download speeds of 39.32Mbps and 30.49Mbps respectively with Rain only managing an average of 19.41Mbps.
While these results may or may not be surprising to you, it’s worth keeping in mind that they are only from the first three months of the year. There’s still another nine whole months for these five mobile network operators to battle it out for South African network dominance in 2024.
But why stop there? 2025 could hold the big break Cell C has presumably been waiting for and 2026 could hold big gains for Telkom. With hundreds of thousands more speed tests to run, it will never be finally decided who is the best mobile network operator. There’s still everything to play for and forever to play it in.