Telecommunications group MTN has maintained its title of South Africa’s best mobile network during the first quarter of 2025, with a Network Quality Score of 9.92.

According to MyBroadband Insights’ first-quarter 2025 Mobile Network Quality Report, Cell C emerged as the second-best operator with a network score of 8.07, overtaking Vodacom, which recorded a network score of 7.21.

Telkom achieved a score of 6.15, while Rain positioned last with a score of 4.44.

During the quarter under review, from January 1 and March 31, 2025, MTN continued to dominate in all aspects of the network performance tests and consistently outperformed its major rivals.

MTN had the highest average download speed of 82.79 Mb/s, an upload speed of 29 Mb/s and latency of 29 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 is attributed to continued investment in network infrastructure for both LTE and 5G networks,” the report outlined.

However, the report highlighted the most significant development during the first quarter: Cell C has replaced Vodacom as the second-best mobile network in South Africa.

Cell C’s average download speed for the first quarter of 2025 was 63.95 Mb/s, with upload speed of 26.67 Mb/s and latency of 35 ms.

“Cell C's performance is driven by completing its customer migration to a virtual radio access network hosted by MTN and optimisation strategies.

“This is the first time Vodacom has not been ranked as the country's best or second-best network,” MyBroadband said.

Vodacom had an average download speed of 61.36 Mb/s, an upload speed of 13.48 Mb/s and latency of 30 ms.

“Some consolation is that Vodacom delivered the best 5G performance in the country, driven by the ongoing expansion of its 5G network.”

In the first quarter of 2025, Telkom had an average download speed of 46.60 Mb/s, an average upload speed of 13.32 Mb/s and latency of 30 ms; and Rain had a download speed of 22.79 Mb/s, an upload speed of 11.38 Mb/s and latency of 28 ms.

The report is based on 306 299 speed tests performed by 6 999 mobile data users across South Africa between January 1 and March 31, 2025, with testing including data from crowdsourced users and dedicated drive tests.

MyBroadband Insights’ dedicated drive tests covered 13 000 km, testing networks in South Africa’s major cities, towns, and roads.