MTN has built 145 new base stations this year

MTN South Africa says it has constructed 145 new base stations this year and made upgrades to another 400 across the country.

This has allowed the network to increase its 5G coverage by 44%, a nine-percentage-point increase since the beginning of the year and a 25-percentage-point increase since August 2023.

MyBroadband’s Speed Test results show the operator’s customers are currently achieving average download speeds of around 180 Mbps and average uploads of 40 Mbps on its 5G network, while latency is in the low 20ms range.

MTN said that it deployed LTE at 1,060 sites around the country this year.

“We are continuously monitoring and optimising our network to meet customer needs for quality and service availability,” said MTN SA network executive Rami Farah.

“This level of resilience means that we can maintain our high standards of reliability and quality regardless of any challenges that otherwise may have caused downtime.”

Farah pointed out that this resilience has been proven in areas with unexpected load reduction and provinces that experienced extreme weather conditions, such as KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, and the Eastern Cape.

MTN also boasts a network uptime of 98%, which required the network to invest tens of billions of rands in backup power at its towers and other key network sites.

With energy security still uncertain, the mobile network is developing a 5 MW solar plant with a 2 MW battery energy storage system.

MTN is also developing four 5G-centred commercial proposals for the mining sector, manufacturing, education, and logistics. These will be concluded by the beginning of next year.

Another area of concern that threatens a network’s uptime is safeguarding base stations against theft and vandalism.

This has been a persistent threat to mobile networks in South Africa, and MTN reports that it has experienced 2,000 incidents of theft and vandalism across its sites in the past quarter.

However, Farah notes that the network is “working with law enforcement and implementing additional security measures, to combat these challenges.”