Best mobile network in South Africa in 2021 — including city rankings

On Jan 11, 2022

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MyBroadband Insights has released its annual 2021 Mobile Network Quality Report, which shows that MTN has the best mobile network in South Africa.

The report further revealed that MTN reigned supreme in all major South African cities, with one exception — Vodacom had the best network in East London.

The report is based on 1.35 million results from MyBroadband’s Speed Test App, which were recorded between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021.

The research shows that South Africa had an average mobile download speed of 40.86Mbps and an average upload speed of 13.82Mbps last year.

MTN had the highest average download speed at 64.23Mbps, followed by Vodacom at 35.05Mbps, Telkom on 27.23Mbps, Cell C on 19.26Mbps and Rain on 13.07Mbps.

MTN also had the best network in Johannesburg, Tshwane, eThekwini, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Gqeberha, Polokwane, George, and Kimberley.

The only city where MTN did not reign supreme was East London, where Vodacom came out on top.

MTN’s exceptional performance results from outspending its rivals on infrastructure investment over the past five years.

Vodacom has, however, started to outspend MTN last year and is keen to regain the top spot in the network quality rankings.

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub told MyBroadband they are investing extensively in their network and have always aimed to be South Africa’s highest quality network.

A device analysis revealed that the peak speed of 751Mbps was achieved on a Huawei P40 Pro 5G, followed by 732Mbps on a Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G and 695Mbps on a Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G.

The charts below provide an overview of the performance of the mobile networks over the last year.