July 2021
In the latest Mobile Experience Snapshot for South Africa, MTN won in three out of the five metrics tested and was statistically tied for highest Excellent Consistent Quality along with Vodacom. MTN had the highest Core Consistent Quality and fastest median speeds, while Telkom had the most responsive network.
Vodacom and MTN statistically tie for highest Excellent Consistent Quality
In Common Coverage Areas across South Africa, Vodacom and MTN statistically tied for highest Excellent Consistent Quality with over 70% of subscribers having a network experience suitable for use-cases like 1080p video streaming, real-time mobile gaming or HD video calling. Both operators had a strong lead over Telkom and Cell C, with Telkom in third place at 58.7% and Cell C in fourth at 48.1%.
For Core Consistent Quality, meaning subscribers having a network experience suitable for use-cases like SD video streaming, social media sharing and web browsing, no operator reached the 90% threshold. However, Vodacom was in first place with the highest Core Consistent Quality at 83.0%, followed closely by MTN at 80.6%. Third place Telkom was only 6% behind Vodacom for a CCQ of 77.0%, while Cell C was in fourth place at 62.9%, 20.1% behind Vodacom.
You can learn more about Tutela’s consistent quality metrics here.
MTN had fastest median download and upload speed
MTN had the fastest download speed in Common Coverage Areas across South Africa with a median transfer speed of 26.4 Mbps. Vodacom was 7.5 Mbps slower than MTN and placed second with a median download speed of 18.9 Mbps. Telkom was in third place with 12.2 Mbps, followed by Cell C at 10.3 Mbps.
MTN had the fastest upload speed at 11.6 Mbps, however Vodacom was close behind by only 2.8 Mbps for a median upload speed of 8.8 Mbps. By the narrowest of margins, Cell C was in third place with a median upload speed of 4.3 Mbps, followed by Telkom in fourth place at 4.2 Mbps.
Telkom had best latency result
Telkom had the most responsive network in Common Coverage Areas across South Africa with a median one-way latency result of 17.2 ms. The difference in performance was incredibly tight, with MTN in second place by only 1 ms at 18.2 ms, followed by Vodacom also only 1 ms behind the operator at 19.2 ms and Cell C in fourth place with 21.3 ms, only 4.1 ms behind Telkom. 
Our findings for South Africa are based on 23.6 billion network quality measurements including 2.21 million speed tests between April and June 2021. Our latest complimentary Mobile Experience Snapshot is available to download from the Tutela Insights portal.