5G22.08.2024

Vodacom’s awesome 5G

Vodacom has boosted its 5G network speeds and extended coverage significantly in 2024.

South Africa’s biggest cellular network was the first to launch local mobile 5G services in May 2020, initially rolling out in a handful of areas in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town.

The launch was possible because networks were issued temporary emergency radio frequency spectrum during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In our initial tests in the first five Vodacom 5G Gauteng clusters, we recorded average download speeds of 154Mbps and uploads of 14Mbps, while latency averaged 31ms.

Although it only launched 5G two months later, MTN’s 5G speeds and coverage quickly bested Vodacom and continued to perform better until at least 2022.

However, in 2023, Analytico observed Vodacom’s average 5G speeds had surged past MTN’s, whose network appeared to be more heavily impacted by severe load-shedding.

Analysis of thousands of MyBroadband Speed Test results for the year-to-date shows that this trend has continued.

Users testing their Vodacom 5G speeds recorded average downloads of 262Mbps and uploads of around 31Mbps. Latency has also come down to around 23ms.

The download speed improvement has been particularly impressive in the last year. In 2023, the average download speed measured was 226Mbps, about 14% slower.

When asked about this improvement, a Vodacom South Africa spokesperson explained that 5G was a central focus for the operator.

“Our 5G deployment strategy is driven by customer and use case demand,” the operator said. “We prioritise 5G in areas where the new technology is needed to support these requirements.”

“Our strategy achieved continuously enhancing customer experience and consistently
improving network key performance indicators , which reflect better performance, stability, and reliability.”

Perhaps evidence of Vodacom’s growing confidence in the capacity of its 5G network is the launch of several uncapped 5G packages, offered through third-party Internet service provider Axxess.

These products offer speeds of up to 500Mbps on packages with various fair usage policies, priced from a fibre-competitive R495 per month. The packages also contend well with MTN’s fixed-5G offering.

Package	Speed	Fair usage policy	Router price	Price
Standard 5G	Up to 500Mbps	After 250GB: Throttled to 2Mbps	R1,499	R495
Advanced 5G		After 350GB: Throttled to 2Mbps		R695
Pro 5G		After 550GB: Throttled to 2Mbps		R895
Pro+ 5G		After 750GB: Throttled to 2Mbps		R995

Over half of South Africans covered with Vodacom 5G

The mobile network operator has also told MyBroadband it now covers over 50% of the population with its 5G connectivity.

That is a substantial improvement from the roughly 30% coverage it had less than ten months ago and ahead of MTN’s 44% coverage.

The company has been investing roughly R10 billion annually in its network over the past few years. The current financial year’s capital expenditure budget is just over R11 billion.

Not all of this money has gone towards improving speeds and coverage — a lot has been dedicated to improving network reliability amid severe load-shedding.

The rotational power cuts put a big strain on mobile networks’ backup capacity, requiring larger batteries and extensive use of generator fuel.

Although Vodacom welcomed the recent reprieve from load-shedding, it said many areas were still heavily impacted by load reduction — more concentrated power cuts to avoid overloading local distribution equipment.

In addition, theft and vandalism, particularly battery theft, remained prevalent and contributed significantly to network downtime.

Vodacom said it remained committed to enhancing network quality by investing in initiatives aimed at elevating the customer experience.

“Leveraging insights from various sources, we identify key areas for network improvement and use this data-driven approach to guide our network strategies and priorities,” the company said.

Vodacom has identified optimising existing network assets to enhance performance, deploying new spectrum to improve coverage and capacity, and rolling out new sites to expand coverage as its key priorities.

The images below show how Vodacom’s 5G coverage changed from March 2023 to August 2024.