MTN and Cool Ideas are the fastest internet providers in South Africa, according to the findings of market reports published by Ookla.
The reports are based on data from Speedtest, reflecting the performance of ISPs during the first quarter of 2021.
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The reports showed that MTN provides the fastest mobile internet connection, while Cool Ideas offers the fastest fixed connection.
A popular internet tool, Speedtest is used to measure download and upload speeds, as well as latency.
Crunching the internet speed numbers in South Africa
The report by Speedtest Intelligence showed MTN achieved a speed score of 54.38 on modern mobile chipsets. The mobile service provider also offers the highest rate of 4G availability with 90.5% coverage in South Africa.
Trailing MTN in second place was Vodacom with a score of 31.80. Telkom was third with 23.63 and Cell C was fourth with 21.42.
However, the Speedtest data shows that while MTN achieved the highest speed score, it trails Telkom’s mean latency of 26 ms with its own latency of 29 ms.
Vodacom also had a mean latency of 29 ms while Cell C was 37 ms.
Meanwhile, fibre provider Cool Ideas was the fastest fixed internet provider with a speed score of 37.80. The company also had the lowest mean latency at 10 ms.
Cool Ideas led the pack in front of Afrihost (31.32), Webafrica (30.87), and Vox Telecom (27.98). Internet provider HeroTel scored the lowest out of the surveyed companies with 9.68.
Webafrica had the second-lowest mean latency with 13 ms, followed by Afrihost and Vox Telecom with 16 ms each.
In both reports, Johannesburg was revealed to have the fastest mean download speed for both mobile and fixed connections. The city achieved a mean download speed of 54.64 Mbps on mobile and 53.48 on fixed.
Pretoria and Cape Town were second and third with mobile connections. Meanwhile, Soweto and Pretoria took second and third place on fixed connections.
Feature image: Unsplash/Thomas Jensen
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