Vodacom and MTN’s incredible work in South Africa

Hurtling at 120km/h down the freeway between Johannesburg and Durban, I’m conducting a telephonic interview with a telecommunications executive.

Over the course of 25 minutes — around 50km — the call was never dropped, and we could both hear one another clearly the whole way.

(For those worried that I was driving recklessly, my wife was behind the wheel so I could work.)

Later, while staying in the middle of nowhere, I got a notification that one of my favourite YouTube channels had just uploaded a new video.

I fired up the app on my smartphone and watched it without any buffering over an LTE connection.

Although I’d tuned the quality down to avoid wasting data while watching on such a small screen, I could have streamed it in full HD without issues if I wanted to.

For many people in South Africa, this type of mobile network performance has become commonplace and expected — because when the networks don’t perform to this level, people complain.

And of course we should complain! Let’s not settle for second best. But it’s also important to take stock of just how good we have it sometimes.

South Africa’s two biggest mobile network operators, Vodacom and MTN, have done exceptional work to achieve 99% population coverage in South Africa.

According to the ITU, citing data from industry regulator Icasa, South Africa has 100% 2G coverage, 99.9% 3G coverage, and 98.5% LTE/4G coverage.

These are way above the global average. We even outperform Europe and The Americas in 3G access.

As of 2022, our 5G population coverage was sitting below the global average at 23.7% — largely thanks to spectrum starvation and load-shedding.

These population coverage numbers also only tell part of the story because as people globally migrate to cities in search of opportunities, they boost that statistic.

Population coverage figures don’t reveal just how much of South Africa’s geographical area has some kind of mobile data connectivity compared to other countries.

Even fairly remote places often have 3G or LTE connectivity from one or more mobile operators.

The widespread availability of cellular networks in South Africa unlocks tremendous opportunity.

For example, earlier this year, I came across the YouTube videos of self-taught software developer Katlego (surname withheld), who was born and raised in the village of Ga-Mphahlele in Limpopo.

As the Covid-19 lockdowns took effect in 2020, Katlego decided to learn how to program.

Armed with a basic mobile data connection, smartphone, and computer, he learned everything he needed to land his first internship in around 18 months.

By February 2023, Katlego had interviewed with a company based out of New York and was pulling a monthly salary of R30,000–R40,000.

Besides providing good coverage, South African mobile data networks are also fast.

The latest data from Analytico shows that MTN recorded an average download speed of 82.5Mbps, followed by Vodacom, with an average of 77.5Mbps during the first quarter of 2024.

This compares well globally. The latest statistics from Opensignal show that download speeds in Europe range from 18.6Mbps to 102.3Mbps.

Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index also shows that the worldwide median for mobile download speeds was 52.98Mbps in March 2024.

To achieve this coverage and performance, Vodacom and MTN have each been pumping around R10 billion per year into their South African networks.

However, over 10% of that has been going towards batteries, generators, and diesel to try and keep their towers online during stage 6 load-shedding.

Their 4G and 5G deployments have also been held back by the lack of radio frequency spectrum.

The South African government finally gave the go-ahead for Icasa to auction off substantial portions of high-value spectrum in 2021.

When the auction concluded in March 2022, Vodacom and MTN had bid over R5 billion each for access to sought-after frequencies.

The impact of spectrum availability is evident in Analytico’s data. South Africa’s mobile operators recorded significant average speed increases since they gained access to additional frequencies.

Yet despite being spectrum-starved, load-shed, and beset by criminals intent on stealing their towers’ batteries, Vodacom and MTN have built networks enabling everyone in South Africa to communicate with one another.

Every engineer who has worked on South Africa’s mobile networks should be proud of what they achieved.