Independent London-based wireless analytics firm Opensignal has released the latest results of its Mobile Network Experience Report comparing and ranking South Africa’s top four mobile network operators (MNO).
This suite of experience benchmarks is wholly the same as Opensignal’s previous studies, the last of which we saw in September last year. For the latest report, data was collected across the country over a 90-day period starting on 1 November 2022 and ending on 29 January 2023.
Opensignal’s mobile network experience tests compare the average user experience of the four major local MNOs across four broad categories; Overall experience, 5G experience, coverage, and consistency. Those categories are made up of fifteen metrics the analytics firm uses to score and rank the MNOs.
And the winning Mobile Operator is…
As you can see from the convenient table overview, Vodacom found the ‘W’ in nine of the fifteen metrics, followed by MTN with seven wins – of which it shared two with Vodacom. While Telkom only managed to secure one win (for availability), Cell C couldn’t muster a single victory. But we’ll give it a participation award. Thanks for trying.
The MNO “two-horse race”, as Opensignal calls it, probably won’t come as a surprise to many. Especially if they’re with MTN or Vodacom. Unless you’re one of the unlucky outliers that don’t share the same experience with the average mobile user.
As interesting as these sorts of reports are, they run the risk of being misinterpreted if you aren’t aware of Opensignal’s methodologies. For example, Telkom’s winning availability score of 97.9% doesn’t mean you can find a Telkom signal in 97,9% of the country. Rather, that is an indication of the proportion of time that Telkom customers in the study had a 3G or 4G network connection in the places they visited the most.
The report also leaves out any cost comparisons between networks. We probably don’t need to remind you that MTN, Telkom, and Vodacom increased prices this year. We’d wager the comparative prices between MNOs, followed by coverage availability, are bigger deciding factors for the majority of users, instead of download speeds or video streaming experience.
That’s not to say those metrics don’t hold weight. If you know you spend most of your data streaming video on your phone, this report makes deciding between MTN or Vodacom easy.
If you want to read the full report or find out what the fifteen metrics mean and how they’re tested, you can do that here.
