South Africa’s best mobile network revealed

MyBroadband Insights has released its latest quarterly Mobile Network Quality Report, which revealed that MTN still has the best mobile network in South Africa.

MyBroadband Insights is South Africa’s leading provider of mobile network research, and recently released its analysis of the performance of South Africa’s mobile networks in the third quarter of 2025.

These findings are based on 313,632 speed tests conducted by mobile users across South Africa between 1 July and 30 September 2025.

The testing included crowdsourced data and dedicated drive tests. As part of the drive testing, MyBroadband Insights travelled 20,000 km and tested networks in South Africa’s major cities, towns, and roads.

Testing was performed using high-end smartphones with support for the latest technologies and mid-range devices that reflect the experience of typical users.

These tests showed that MTN continued to dominate overall network performance and consistently outperformed its competitors across the most important metrics.

To determine the best mobile network in South Africa, each network was given a “Network Quality Score” based on download speed, upload speed, and latency.

The Network Quality Score out of 10 then shows how a network performed compared to other networks.

MTN reigned supreme with a Network Quality Score of 9.95, followed by Cell C at 7.82, Vodacom at 7.45, Telkom at 5.74, and Rain at 4.12.

The telecoms giant also recorded the highest average download speed at 93.72 Mbps, followed by Vodacom at 72.2 Mbps, Cell C at 66.64 Mbps, Telkom at 46.24 Mbps, and Rain at 22.93 Mbps.

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

MyBroadband Insights attributed MTN’s strong performance to continued investment in infrastructure for both LTE and 5G networks.

Cell C retained second place, ahead of Vodacom, with significantly better average upload speeds to compensate for the slightly slower download speed.

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

Vodacom delivered the best 5G performance in the country, driven by its ongoing investment in the latest network technologies.

The table below shows an overview of the mobile network rankings in South Africa, based on analysis from MyBroadband Insights.