The ace up Cell C’s sleeve

Cell C is positioning itself to capitalise on South Africa’s rapidly growing mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) market.

The company is currently the largest MVNO partner in South Africa, holding an estimated 80% to 85% share of the country’s MVNO market.

While Cell C used to operate a national mobile network with physical infrastructure, the high capital expenditure associated with this left the company with an unsustainable debt burden.

As part of its turnaround strategy, Cell C signed roaming agreements with MTN and Vodacom in 2023 to offer its own customers mobile products and services over their networks.

Since then, Cell C’s MVNO business has grown to become one of the biggest contributors to the company’s continued financial recovery.

In the company’s annual results for the financial year ending 31 May 2026, Cell C revealed that its MVNO Home Location Register (HLR) subscribers now sat at 5.7 million.

This sits alongside Cell C’s direct customer base of 8.9 million, bringing the company’s total number of active users to 14.6 million.

“MVNO HLR subscribers increased by 1.22 million over the 12-month period, with no slowdown in the second half,” Cell C said. “We expect this momentum to continue.”

Over the previous financial year, Cell C also recorded a 131% year-on-year increase in data traffic for its MVNO subscribers.

In an interview with 702, Cell C CFO El Kope said the company had high expectations for the growth of its wholesale business, including its MVNO division.

“We definitely believe that the way we partner with our customers in that segment has led to the growth that we have seen in the current year of over 20%,” Kope said.

“As we see more diversification in that segment, especially in the MVNOs, we expect that we will continue to benefit from that.”

Africa’s MVNO market is growing

Cell C’s continued success in this business comes as the African MVNO market is expected to grow exponentially.

According to the 2026 Africa MVNO Report by Africa Analysis, MVNO users on the African continent currently number around 8 million across just nine markets.

This number is expected to grow fivefold over the next four years, reaching 40 million people by 2030.

Director of business development at Africa Analysis, Dobek Pater, said the continent had so far lagged behind the rest of the world in terms of MVNO development.

“We see that the opportunity is aligning itself with various factors, especially in some of the key markets in Africa, and that’s going to lead to growth,” Pater said.

“Having said that, at the moment, less than 2% of total mobile users are actually MVNO subscribers. That will grow to about 6.2% in our view over the next five years.”

According to Pater, South Africa remains the continent’s foremost MVNO market, citing Cell C’s current subscriber numbers as evidence.

By 2030, Pater said the total number of MVNO subscribers in South Africa was projected to reach around 14 million, more than a third of the African subscriber base.

This is due in part to South Africa’s high mobile penetration rate of almost 200%, meaning the country has nearly two SIM cards or phone numbers for every person.

By comparison, many countries in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa have yet to reach 100% mobile penetration.

“In some instances, mobile network operators will give up some customers to the MVNOs,” Pater said. “But on the flip side, they may gain wholesale customers.”

“Where they may lose some retail sales, they will gain wholesale sales. If we look at the case of Cell C, they’ve made a very successful business out of that over the past 20 years or so.”