5G rocking in South Africa

South Africa’s major telecoms companies radically expanded their mobile 5G connectivity and performance in 2024.

While the Covid-19 pandemic and load-shedding challenges limited 5G rollouts for the first few years of the technology’s availability, the expansion has exploded in the past year.

As of December 2024, there were three operators offering 5G mobile services in South Africa — Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom.

Vodacom was the first to launch commercial mobile 5G services in the country in June 2020.

At the end of 2024, its 5G network reached over 50% of the South African population, up from 30% a year ago.

That means its 5G network is available where roughly 32 million South Africans live.

Vodacom said its 5G deployment strategy was driven by customer and use-case demand.

“We prioritise 5G in areas where the new technology is needed to support these requirements,” Vodacom said.

Analysis by market and network intelligence research firm Analytico also showed that Vodacom’s 5G network performance improved substantially between the last quarters of 2023 and 2024.

The Vodacom 5G network’s average download speed stood at 198.83Mbps in Q3 2023. As of Q4 2024, it had surged to 293.88Mbps, a 48% improvement. Upload speeds also climbed by 45%.

South Africa’s second biggest mobile network by customers and local revenue — MTN — launched its 5G mobile services about a month after Vodacom.

It initially grew its network faster than Vodacom but was overtaken sometime in the past year.

Nonetheless, MTN’s 5G network also grew exponentially — from covering 35% of the population at the start of 2024 to 44% by the end of the year.

Its 5G network’s download and upload speeds also jumped 21% and 16%, respectively.

MTN South Africa told MyBroadband that increasing its 5G footprint was one of its main focuses for 2025, while it was also exploring the possibilities of 5.5G technology.

“The expansion of our 5G network is determined by various factors — one of them being the commercial 5G ecosystem device growth on the network,” MTN said.

To help stimulate demand for 5G services, the mobile network launched an affordable 5G-capable device called the Icon 5G in November 2024.

In partnership with ZTE, MTN also demonstrated the impressive capabilities of 5G in providing high data speeds at sea.

South Africa’s third-biggest network operator — Telkom — did not provide specific population coverage figures.

Telkom said it provided 5G coverage in all major cities and had grown its base to include previously underserved areas but did not regard 5G as a priority at this stage as it was focusing on improving its 4G network.

The tables below provide an overview of the coverage and performance improvements of 5G mobile networks in South Africa at the end of 2024.

5G network coverage growth

5G network performance growth

Big things in the pipeline for Cell C and Rain

South Africa’s two smaller mobile operators, Cell C and Rain, have also advanced their 5G plans.

Cell C started conducting 5G connectivity tests in its lab, in partnership with its Vodacom and MTN.

In August 2024, the company’s chief technology officer, Schalk Visser, said the tests were “coming along well.”

In more recent feedback, the company told MyBroadband it was gearing up 5G readiness and commenced modernising its core network to the latest architecture to support 5G deployment.

While Rain was the first mobile network to launch 5G connectivity through its fixed-wireless products in late 2019, it has yet to roll out mobile 5G.

The company grew its fixed-5G coverage to 8 million homes in 2024 and upgraded its network to 5.5G to unlock higher capacity and coverage benefits.

Rain previously told MyBroadband it planned to launch mobile 5G services sometime in 2025.