Telecommunications group MTN has maintained its title of South Africa’s best mobile network for 2024, with a Network Quality Score of 9.9.

According to MyBroadband Insights’ 2024 Mobile Network Quality Report, Vodacom maintained its position as the second-best operator with a Network Quality Score of 7.72, followed by Cell C, which scored 7.12, Telkom with a score of 5.07, and Rain with a score of 4.51.

The report is based on 1.17-million speed tests performed by 18 649 mobile data users across South Africa between January 1 and December 31, 2024, with testing including data from crowdsourced users and dedicated drive tests, ensuring a balanced and accurate representation of real-world network performance.

MyBroadband Insights’ dedicated drive tests covered 52 000 km, performing testing using smartphones that support the latest technologies, as well as mid-range smartphones that replicate the experience of most users, in all of South Africa’s major cities and large towns.

MTN reigned supreme in all aspects of the network performance tests and significantly outperformed its major rivals.

MTN has the highest average download speed of 80.88 Mb/s, an upload speed of 25.24 Mb/s and latency of 30 ms.

MTN was also the top-performing network across major cities, including Tshwane, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini and Mangaung.

“Its strong performance followed extensive investment in network resilience and rolling out more than 6 200 new Radio Access Network activities. These activities include modernisation, new site builds, sectorisations, and transmission upgrades,” the report commented.

MTN also implemented advanced network optimisation techniques, such as software upgrades, energy-efficient equipment and smart load balancing.

Vodacom, which had an average download speed of 65.14 Mb/s, an upload speed of 13.84 Mb/s and latency of 32 ms, achieved the best 5G performance in South Africa.

This was driven by the continuous expansion of its 5G network, with the results highlighting the impact of this investment.

Meanwhile, the MyBroadband Insights report said that Cell C was the “biggest surprise” of 2024, with its network speeds doubling over the past 18 months, closing in on Vodacom in second place.

Cell C’s average download speed for 2024 was 54.43 Mb/s, with upload speed of 20.50 Mb/s and latency of 39 ms.

“Cell C said this improvement resulted from completing its customer migration to a virtual radio access network hosted by MTN and optimisation strategies,” the report said.

In 2024, Telkom had an average download speed of 34.07 Mb/s, an average upload speed of 11.82 Mb/s and latency of 35 ms; and Rain had a download speed of 21.82 Mb/s, an upload speed of 11.31 Mb/s and latency of 28 ms.