Real price of mobile data in South Africa – MyBroadband
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An analysis by MyBroadband shows that the true price of mobile data in South Africa is far lower than proclaimed in widely distributed research from international firms.
Global Internet pricing comparison reports like those compiled by Cable.co.uk often serve as ammunition for South Africans and politicians criticising mobile networks.
Cable.co.uk’s most recent report determined South Africa’s average price for 1GB of data was $1.81 (R33), the 20th most expensive in Sub-Saharan Africa and only the 148th most affordable out of 237 countries.
This amount again received attention after it was widely shared in a report compiled by Naspers.
However, that analysis was based purely on 1GB data bundles and did not look at larger bundles.
The average consumption of data users in South Africa has far exceeded 1GB in recent years.
MyBroadband recently determined that South Africa’s data prices for larger 20GB, 50GB, 100GB, and 200GB bundles were highly competitive with other African countries, especially considering the quality of local networks.
While research like Cable.co.uk’s can be useful to a certain degree, it is extremely limited in scope and not a reflection of actual pricing.
Calculating the true price of mobile data in South Africa — or any country for that matter — will require a much more resource-intensive and time-consuming analysis.
There are five major mobile networks and a plethora of mobile virtual network operators with widely varying prices for numerous data plans.
Mobile networks also offer highly personalised data bundles with prices that might sometimes only be available to a particular user in a specific location for a limited time.
MyBroadband asked Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, and Cell C for their actual effective data rates.
Where a mobile network did not provide feedback, we used their mobile data revenue and total data consumption in their financial results to get a rough idea of their effective data prices.
It should be noted that the profit made from data sales is more difficult to determine as the costs related specifically to data services are not reported separately.
Vodacom — R16.55
Neither Vodacom and MTN have reported the total data consumption on their mobile networks.
However, this figure can be calculated using their average data consumption figures per data user.
In Vodacom’s 2023/2024 financial results, it had 31.8 million smart devices on its network, each with an average consumption of 3.8GB per month.
That works out to about 120.84 million gigabytes consumed per month or 1.45 billion gigabytes in a year.
However, Vodacom only provided data revenue for its prepaid users in 2024/2024 — which stood at R12.7 billion.
Assuming that contract customers contributed data revenue at the same proportion to their total revenue as the prepaid customers had, they would have brought in another R11.3 billion.
With the total estimated data revenue for the year being R24 billion, Vodacom would have collected R16.55 per GB of data consumed on its network.
The table below provides a summary of our calculations for Vodacom’s effective data rate in 2023/2024.
| Prepaid | Contract | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | R26.386 billion | R23.486 billion | R49.872 billion |
| Data revenue contribution to total | 48.13% | 48.13% | n/a |
| Total data revenue | R12.7 billion | R11.30 billion* | R24 billion* |
| Data consumed in a year | 1.45 billion gigabytes | ||
| Estimated price per GB of data | R16.55 | ||
| * Estimated based on 48.13% data revenue contribution of prepaid customers. | |||
MTN — R8.49
MTN’s total annual data revenue in South Africa was reported outright. It stood at R20.027 billion in 2023.
However, MTN also did not share how much data was consumed on its network during the year.
The only way to determine this was to use its average data consumption figures of 3GB per active prepaid data customer and 16.5GB per active postpaid data subscriber.
Although MTN also revealed it had 20.4 million active data subscribers, it did not break down how many of these customers were on prepaid and how many were contract customers.
Assuming the proportions of data customers are the same as those of all MTN customers, 76%, or 15.44 million, would be prepaid users, and 24%, or 9.1 million, would be contract customers.
The prepaid data subscribers would consume 555.71 million gigabytes over a year, while the contract customers used about 1.80 billion gigabytes.
That works out to roughly 2.36 billion gigabytes consumed on MTN South Africa’s network in 2023.
Therefore, the effective cost of data on MTN’s network would be about R8.49, the cheapest of the three biggest operators.
That casts a different perspective on MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita’s assertion that the operator’s mobile data is too cheap.
Mupita argued that the operators’ residential fixed-LTE and fixed-5G products, many of which are uncapped and provide large amounts of data before throttling, are impeding data revenue growth.
While MTN’s network traffic surged by 27.7% in 2023, its data revenue only increased 7.4%.
The situation has worsened in the first half of the year, with data traffic skyrocketing by another 36.5% while data revenue only climbed a marginal 2.4%.
Telkom — R11.06
Telkom was the first to provide MyBroadband with feedback on its effective data cost.
The mobile network said its current effective retail rate per gigabyte was about R9.62. When including 15% VAT, the rate is roughly R11.06.
The network also provided previous effective data rates, showing how its data pricing has declined:
- 2018 — R19.66 (R22.61)
- 2022 — R12.32 (R14.17)
- 2023 — R10.56 (R12.14)
Telkom said although it has strived to offer the lowest data prices since inception, strident above-inflation push costs had created trying conditions to maintain cost efficiencies, as deflationary top-line unit revenue rates kicked in.
Telkom’s claimed effective data rate lines up with data from its financial results.
Telkom’s 2023/2024 financial results revealed that 1,417 petabytes of data traffic flowed through its mobile network during the year.
That is equal to 1,417 million terabytes or 1.417 billion gigabytes of data.
The operator’s mobile data revenue for the year was R14.3 billion.
Therefore, customers paid Telkom about R10.09 for every gigabyte of data consumed on its network during its 2023/2024 financial year.
Cell C — Unknown, but lower than previously
Cell C did not provide its latest effective data rate across all its products.
The last time it published a full set of annual results was for the 2022 financial year, making it impossible to calculate a rough figure ourselves.
However, the mobile network asserts its effective rates have dropped by over 20% in the past two years.
“Our goal has always been to provide mobile data at highly competitive prices,” Cell C said.
“Notably, between July 2022 and July 2024, these rates decreased by 30%, thanks to an ongoing review of our prepaid and prepaid broadband offers.”
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