MTN wins across the board in South Africa

South Africa State of Mobile Networks

January 21st 2020

MTN provides its users with an “Excellent” connection in 80.6% of tests, according to independent crowdsourced data company Tutela. The percentage of tests uses Tutela’s Excellent Consistent Quality thresholds which represent a range of use-cases including realtime mobile online gaming, HD video streaming and group HD video calls.

Key findings from the report include:

  • In addition to leading for Excellent Consistent Quality, MTN took first place in all other metrics including Core Consistent Quality, download/upload throughput, and latency.
  • Vodacom came in a healthy second place to MTN with only a 3.9% difference in Excellent Consistent Quality and a 0.8% difference in Core Consistent Quality for Common Coverage Areas in South Africa.
  • All operators reached the threshold of 90% for Core Consistent Quality, with MTN setting the benchmark at 95.9% Core Consistent Quality - meaning nearly all successful connections should be able to support day to day uses like social media sharing, standard definition video streaming and general web browsing. 

 

Tom Luke, VP at Tutela commented: “With the advent of 5G in South Africa, beginning with the Rain launch in September last year, it will be interesting to see how the big four providers react. At the moment, it’s a close race for the top spot between MTN and Vodacom, and future success in the busy and competitive telecoms space will likely be the ones that focus on delivering customers with the best mobile experience, regardless of where or when they use their devices.”

Tutela sources data from over 490,000 devices across South Africa to measure network quality from the end-user perspective.

The full report on South Africa is available here.

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