Shoprite K’Nect and Afrihost Air Mobile destroy Vodacom and MTN

South Africans looking for the cheapest prepaid mobile data should avoid the major players and consider one of several smaller mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs).

That is based on MyBroadband’s comprehensive comparison of prices for prepaid data bundles with a validity of 30 days or longer.

In addition to the five major mobile networks, there are numerous MVNOs in South Africa — including Capitec Connect, FNB Connect, Mr Price Mobile, Pick n Pay Mobile, Shoprite K’nect, and Standard Bank Mobile.

MVNOs do not own radio network infrastructure and don’t licence the spectrum they use to transmit signals.

Instead, they rely on existing networks like Cell C, MTN, and Vodacom and offer services on top of their infrastructure.

Among these MVNOs is Shoprite’s K’nect, which recently reduced its data bundle prices by 35%.

It offers two types of rates: a standard rate when buying over the counter or via USSD or a special 50% discounted price when buying using Shoprite’s free Money Market banking account.

Our comparison of prepaid data prices found it was the cheapest option in all but two instances where it had a data bundle available, provided the customer bought the bundles through their Money Market account.

Even when using the price bundles bought over the counter or via the standard USSD interface, K’nect was often the most affordable or second-cheapest network.

Another advantage of its bundles over many competitors was the 60-day validity period, where most networks’ bundles expire after 30 days.

Afrihost Air Mobile also offers a 60-day validity period on its prepaid data bundles.

Its prices were either cheaper or on par with K’nect’s standard bundle prices.

One of its big advantages is that subscribers can get a 1GB monthly data bundle free each month when claimed through the Afrihost app.

After that, it charges R30 per 1GB 30-day bundle, which is still the second cheapest of all the operators.

Air Mobile competes very well with high-capacity bundles, as does Cell C and HelloMobile.

The two biggest mobile networks — Vodacom and MTN — were generally more expensive than the MVNOs.

Interestingly, their prices were identical in all cases where they offered bundles with the same data allocations.

That means buying a 250MB, 500MB, 1GB, 2GB, 10GB, or 30GB bundle costs the same from either operator.

Customers consuming multiple tens of gigabytes of mobile data every month would do best to avoid FNB Connect, as its prices for bundles with 20GB or more were unusually high.

Capitec Connect’s bundles were priced at much more competitive rates, and they did not have an expiry date as long as the SIM was used every 180 days.

Standard Bank Mobile also offers never-expiring bundles, but these are significantly more expensive than their 30-day bundles.

You might be getting what you pay for

MTN and Cell C currently offer MVNO platforms in South Africa.

However, Cell C technically no longer operates its own infrastructure, instead relying on MTN to manage its radio access network and a roaming agreement with Vodacom.

Therefore, all its partner MVNOs actually use MTN or Vodacom’s network infrastructure.

K’Next has specifically said it uses Cell C on MTN. That does not mean you can expect MTN-like performance, however.

Analytico’s analysis of MVNO performance on Cell C’s network in 2022 found average download speeds measured between 11-13Mbps.

Over the same period, the average download speed on Cell C’s own network was about 23Mbps.

The best-performing networks were MTN and Vodacom, with average speeds of roughly 69Mbps and 49Mbps, while Telkom recorded about 29Mbps on average.

This suggests a strong correlation between mobile data pricing and network performance, so it is good to be aware of this before making a purchasing decision.

The table below compares the prepaid data prices for bundles of varying sizes across major mobile networks and MVNOs.

We only considered bundles offered by two or more operators.

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