UK mobile data prices and speeds compared with Vodacom and MTN

I recently visited the United Kingdom and paid roughly the same for mobile data on an eSIM as I would have in South Africa.

However, the package I bought often performed poorly despite only being used in London, a major metropolitan area.

I usually purchase an eSIM before an overseas trip for Internet access on the go, rather than buying a physical SIM card upon arrival.

While eSIM prices are often slightly higher than those of a physical SIM card bought in-country, the convenience has always been worth the premium.

There is no need to first visit a store, present your passport, get a SIM card, physically put it in your phone, and then wait for it to be activated.

An eSIM is completely digital and lets you get connected with minimal fuss.

Numerous mobile apps allow you to quickly buy and download an eSIM for a specific country or region you are visiting.

My preferred choice for limited-time capped data bundles is Airalo, while those looking for uncapped data can consider Holafly.

Screenshots from the eSIM buying process on Airalo

Prices similar to Vodacom and MTN

For this particular trip, I opted for a 3GB 30-day eSIM on Uki Mobile, which offers data roaming on O2 and Three.

This plan was priced at $10, roughly R188 at the time of purchase, with the bank’s conversion fee included.

This compares fairly well with prepaid mobile data prices on Vodacom and MTN.

The former charges R155 for 2.5GB monthly data while the latter has a 3GB monthly bundle for R199.

However, my fellow travellers warned me that O2 and Three’s networks had previously performed badly on their visits to London.

A tour guide also said the best-performing network depended highly on the area where we would be located.

He recommended using Vodafone in London, while Three was generally more reliable in rural England.

Heathrow Airport also has SIM card vending machines, but with prices starting at £25 (R605), I regarded these to be too rich for my blood.

At our first accommodation near Covent Garden, an upscale shopping and entertainment hub, I constantly got download speeds under 5Mbps and uploads under 1Mbps.

Sometimes, my network would drop altogether, and I could not access online services at all.

This is a far cry from Vodacom or MTN’s typical performance in affluent neighbourhoods of highly-populated local cities like Cape Town, Johannesburg, or Pretoria.

For the second half of our trip, we moved about 2km to the north to a hotel in Marylebone.

This area had much better performance on O2, with nearly 50Mbps downloads and uploads just over 2Mbps.

Below are examples of speed tests performed at our hotel near Covent Garden (left) and another performed near Marylebone (right).

The latency can be ignored as the data packets needed to travel to MyBroadband’s servers in South Africa.

To see whether Vodafone offered better performance, I went to one of its stores to buy an eSIM.

To my surprise, a store employee said that Vodafone did not offer eSIMs on prepaid, only on contracts.

The most affordable prepaid data-only physical SIM card I could buy came with 7GB mobile data and cost £10, working out to roughly R242.

This was quite a bit cheaper than the R365 that 7GB of prepaid mobile data on Vodacom would cost in South Africa.  It was also more affordable than a 6GB prepaid data bundle on MTN.

However, the employee advised against using this option as activations were currently taking over a day to process.

With just about two days left in London, I figured this would be a waste of money.

Credit where it is due

The experience reminded me that South Africa has genuinely world-class telecommunications operators and excellent mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs).

While uncapped data and calling SIMs are common in the UK and Europe, they cost well over R500 and come with fair usage policies that can significantly curb data consumption.

Multiple mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in South Africa also offer cheaper capped data prices than I paid in the UK.

Afrihost Air Mobile and Melon Mobile sell 10GB data bundles for R150 and R199, respectively, for example.

These can be bought on an eSIM via a mobile app — just like through Airalo.