Surprise result in peak mobile data speed breakdown

New research by Analytico revealed that Rain has the highest proportion of users who enjoy mobile data speeds above 80Mbps.

Analytico is a research company that provides reports, network intelligence, and marketing insights to South Africa’s ICT industry.

It analysed the data from 865,415 speed tests performed on MyBroadband’s mobile apps between 1 January 2022 and 31 August 2022.

Test results were processed to obtain an average download speed per user on a particular network over the period.

The research revealed that 54% of South African mobile data users experience real-world speeds of under 20Mbps.

40% of South Africans have typical speeds of between 20Mbps and 80Mbps, and 6% enjoy speeds of over 100Mbps.

A surprising finding was that Rain had the highest ratio (9.2%) of mobile subscribers who enjoy speeds of over 80Mbps.

It was unexpected because Rain does not offer 5G to its mobile subscribers. Although it has an extensive 5G network, it is currently only available as a fixed service.

MTN and Vodacom, in comparison, offer 5G to their mobile subscribers and were expected to have the highest proportion of users who record speeds above 80Mbps.

One possible reason is that Vodacom and MTN’s subscribers have a higher number of low-end subscribers with 3G phones, which drags down the ratio.

Another related factor that could impact the average speeds is that Rain only has a 4G network, while Vodacom and MTN still operate 2G and 3G networks, reducing the average throughput per user.

MTN had the second-highest ratio of users with speeds above 80Mbps at 7.2%, followed by Vodacom at 6.5%, Telkom at 6%, and Cell C at 5.3%.

The table below provides a breakdown of the speed brackets of South Africa’s five mobile operators.

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