5G slowdown in South Africa

Although South Africa’s 5G coverage has continued to grow in 2025, the country’s two largest cellular providers have slowed down their rollouts substantially compared to last year.

South Africa’s biggest mobile network, Vodacom, was the first to launch mobile 5G services in May 2020. Its inital rollout was slow due to the unavailability of spectrum and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Vodacom picked up the pace in subsequent years and reached 30% population coverage by the end of 2023.

During those first three and a half years, the average quarterly 5G coverage growth was slightly more than two percentage points.

In 2024, Vodacom’s coverage increased by 20 percentage points to 50% of the population, working out to an average of 5 percentage points each quarter.

Fast-forward another three months, and things have started to slow down again. Vodacom told MyBroadband its 5G population coverage was 51.7% by the end of March 2025.

Despite the deceleration, Vodacom told MyBroadband that 5G remained a central focus. It explained that its 5G expansion strategy was guided by customer demand and evolving use cases.

The company expects to spend R12 billion on capital expenditure in the 2026 financial year, which will include spending on its 5G expansion.

Vodacom’s biggest rival and South Africa’s second-largest network, MTN, has also slowed down its 5G rollout.

MTN launched mobile 5G services roughly a month after Vodacom and initially expanded coverage aggressively.

However, Vodacom’s coverage and 5G network speeds surpassed MTN’s sometime in 2024. The year was a tough one for MTN due to poor economic conditions in Nigeria, its biggest market.

MTN’s 5G population coverage in South Africa stood at 44% by the second half of 2024. As of May 2025, it has increased by one percentage point.

MTN said its 5G expansion in 2025 has primarily been focused on metro and township areas across the country.

“Significant deployments have been completed in key regions including Johannesburg, Tshwane, KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, and the Western Cape,” the company said.

For the 2025 financial year, MTN has committed over R3 billion towards radio network capacity upgrades and modernisation.

“This includes significant investment in the ongoing expansion of the 5G network, as well as the broader enhancement of network infrastructure,” MTN said.

The company also told MyBroadband it has seen a 100% increase in 5G data traffic in the past year, driven by rising availability and adoption of 5G-enabled smartphones and routers.

Telkom focused on areas with high demand

Telkom was a bit of a latecomer in 5G, initially rolling out its first towers with the technology in October 2022. It has not shared any population coverage figures since then.

Unlike Vodacom and MTN, the company is taking a more measured approach to 5G expansion, with the initial focus being on areas where the technology can reduce strain on 4G networks.

“The core of our 5G deployment strategy is to enhance network efficiency by offloading traffic from our 4G network where congestion is identified,” Telkom said.

“We actively monitor our 4G sites, and where conditions are met, including demand pressure and feasibility, we prioritise 5G rollout to improve the customer experience.”

Telkom said the penetration of 5G-enabled devices was a key consideration for expansion of the technology.

“In many areas, device penetration remains relatively low and does not yet justify a wide-scale 5G rollout,” Telkom said.

“However, we are confident that as the adoption of 5G devices increases, we will reach a critical mass where 5G deployment becomes both commercially viable and operationally necessary.”

Another cellular network provider that offers 5G services — Rain — told MyBroadband it was steadily widening its 5G footprint nationwide by activating additional sites.

“We plan to invest further in 2025, including in our 700MHz rollout,” a spokesperson said. However, the company would not share details on the extent of its coverage.

Rain’s 5G service differs from the other three major mobile networks as it is limited to fixed connections. The company plans to launch mobile 5G sometime in 2025.

The only major mobile network in South Africa that has not launched 5G is Cell C. It aims to go live with 5G by the end of the month.