Cell C not matching MTN’s network performance
Cell C’s mobile data network performs well according to national speed testing data, but was significantly slower than that of its supplier, MTN.
MyBroadband Insights recently investigated the data network performance that Cell C users can get on prepaid SIM cards running on the MTN network.
Cell C switched off all of its tower infrastructure and migrated its prepaid customers to a virtual radio access network provided by MTN. The migration was completed in 2023.
It also has a more traditional roaming agreement with Vodacom. Cell C’s contract customers generally roam on Vodacom.
While Cell C has started switching customers between the two, subscribers are generally assigned to a host network based on whether they are prepaid or postpaid.
These wholesale agreements with MTN and Vodacom allow Cell C to allocate fewer resources to developing infrastructure and more to improving its products and services.
The improvements from this move were clearly evident in MyBroadband Insights’ testing during 2024.
Cell C CEO Jorge Mendes said a network parity programme with MTN allowed Cell C’s data network performance to equal and even exceed that of its wholesale radio access partner in some places.
Then, in Q1 2025, the MyBroadband Insights Mobile Network Quality Report revealed that Cell C had overtaken Vodacom to become the second-best network in South Africa.
This was the first time Vodacom had not been ranked as the country’s best or second-best network.
Some consolation for Vodacom was that it continued to deliver the best 5G performance in the country, driven by the ongoing expansion of its 5G network.
MTN and Cell C 4G-only test
As Cell C has been working on improving its products, services, and internal processes, MyBroadband Insights wanted to see how close it has come to matching MTN’s performance.
For this investigation, we analysed more than 100,000 tests conducted by one of our internal Samsung S23 test benches in 2025.
This test bench only tests on 4G, which is ideal for this comparison, as Cell C is only just starting to roll out 5G on its network.
The test bench is driven throughout South Africa multiple times per year, covering all major cities and routes, as well as many smaller towns.
The tests are all down-sampled to individual network cells before calculating the average speeds achieved.
This allows us to directly compare performance between the networks, even if one device performed more tests in an area than the other.
MTN outperformed Cell C on all the compared metrics, but Cell C still demonstrated excellent performance, with averages close to those of MTN.
MTN achieved an average download speed of 85 Mbps, with an upload speed of 38 Mbps, and a low latency of only 26 ms.
Meanwhile, Cell C achieved an average of 70 Mbps for downloads, 32 Mbps for uploads, and a latency of 33 ms.
| Network | Average Download (Mbps) | Average Upload (Mbps) | Average Latency (ms) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MTN | 84.90 | 38.10 | 25.77 |
| Cell C | 69.95 | 31.97 | 32.96 |
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