MTN is the fastest mobile network in South Africa, report reveals

In South Africa, there’s much debate surrounding which of the four mobile networks is fastest, let alone which is the most cost effective to use. But we can now, somewhat, put the debate to rest.

MyBroadband today published its Mobile Network Quality Report for South Africa, looking at the Q4 2017 performance of these networks.

Data is accrued through the publisher’s Android Speed Test app, which played host to some 113 000 tests and 8250 users during this period.

And notably, there is a clear winner.

MTN’s average download and upload speeds saw the highest average of any network, with 22.22Mbps and 10.07Mbps respectively. Latency is also pretty stellar, with 50ms on average. This all from 28 870 tests.

Vodacom is second, trailing MTN by just a few bytes on download speed (21.63Mbps) but could only achieve 8.32Mbps uploads on average. Vodacom also has the third worse latency of any network.

Telkom comes in third, and the gulf between the top two networks is clearly visible. 15.35Mbps downloads with only 4.44Mbps uploads is what you’ll likely experience on its network. Thankfully, it boasts the best latency figures of the four.

And finally, dragging its feet in fourth place, Cell C saw an average download speed of 14.05Mbps, and an upload speed of 6.25Mbps. It also featured the fewest total tests on the app, and the highest overall latency of 66ms.

Taking all the above into account, South Africa’s average mobile download speeds equate to 19.29Mbps, while uploads level off at 7.71Mbps.

Feature image: warrenski via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-SA, resized)