MTN claims victory as best voice network provider in Pretoria

MTN is Pretoria’s leading voice network provider based on research conducted by MyBroadband Insights.

This project was run in partnership with Keysight distributor Coral-I and assessed the performance of the four major South African mobile voice network providers — Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom, and MTN.

Call data was collected between 15 May and 4 July 2024 using Keysight’s world-renowned testing platform, Nemo.

The testing included over 633 recorded call hours across South Africa’s major cities, secondary cities, smaller towns, and major roads.

The four main attributes assessed for each network were Call Setup Time, Call Setup Success Ratio, Dropped Call Ratio, and Speech Quality mean opinion score (MOS).

To ensure accuracy, the testing used custom-designed originating and terminating stations, each boasting four Android devices with special firmware designed to measure network key performance indicators.

The terminating station was placed in a building with good signal quality and access to a backup power supply.

The collected data was collated using European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) specifications.

Pretoria results

According to our data, MTN was the highest overall achiever for Pretoria, with an overall score of 90.9, closely followed by Vodacom, with a score of 90.6.

MTN, Vodacom, and Cell C all boasted a perfect Call Setup Success Ratio.

Vodacom had the fastest Call Setup Time of 1.13 seconds, while Telkom had the lowest Dropped Call Ratio of 0.26%.

Telkom also had the highest Speech Quality MOS, scoring 4.35 out of 5.

The table below summarises the voice network test results for Pretoria.

Voice network testing — Pretoria