Vodacom goes from hero to zero
Vodacom has seen its mobile network performance plummet to third place in South Africa, behind MTN and Cell C, which was unthinkable a decade ago.
When Vodacom was founded in 1993 by a small team under the leadership of Alan Knott-Craig, there was an insatiable drive to be the best.
Knott-Craig, an engineer, was not happy with anything other than being the best. He even wrote a book titled “Second is Nothing”.
With him at the helm, Vodacom focused on network rollout and quality, innovation, and excellence. They ensured they were the technology leaders in South Africa.
Knott-Craig was never content with losing to his biggest rival, MTN. Cell C was not even mentioned, as losing to them would be inconceivable.
He passed this drive for excellence to former CEO Pieter Uys and CTO Andries Delport, who would not settle for second-best either.
They were always one step ahead of MTN. Vodacom was first to launch 3G, roll out HSPA on a mass scale, and offer commercial LTE.
Its network was so far ahead of the rest that it was seen as untouchable. MTN, Telkom, and Cell C were content to battle for second place.
However, in time, the drive to be exceptional fizzled out. Vodacom became a follower rather than a leader.
Over the last few years, MTN’s network team, led by Zoltan Miklos, has dominated network quality in South Africa.
MTN developed such a lead over the rest that it was now Vodacom that had to battle for second place. The tables have, therefore, turned.
What was striking was how little resistance Vodacom put up in the network quality fight. They basically waved the white flag and let MTN take its crown.
There are still pockets of excellence at the company, like Vodacom Business, which is the best Enterprise Telecoms Provider.
However, in network quality, Vodacom has lost the battle, and there are no clear signs that it has the fight in it to take back the crown.
Vodacom is now worse than Cell C
MyBroadband Insights released its Q2 2026 Mobile Network Quality Report on Thursday, 16 July 2026, which shows that Vodacom has plummeted to third place.
MyBroadband Insights’ network quality rankings reports are the most respected in the industry because of their scale and testing methodology.
The Q2 report is based on 360,000 speed tests conducted by thousands of mobile users across South Africa.
The testing combined crowdsourced data and dedicated drive tests to provide a comprehensive assessment of mobile network performance.
As part of the drive testing, MyBroadband Insights travelled 20,000km and tested networks in South Africa’s major cities, towns, and roads.
Testing was performed on high-end smartphones supporting the latest technologies, as well as on mid-range devices that reflect the experience of typical users.
It showed that MTN dominated the network quality rankings, followed by Cell C in second, and Vodacom in third.
What was unthinkable under Alan Knott-Craig and Pieter Uys has now happened. Vodacom is losing to Cell C in network quality.
| Network Operator | Download Speed (Mbps) | Upload Speed (Mbps) | Latency (ms) | Network Quality Score |
| MTN | 91.11 | 32.46 | 29 | 9.96 |
| Cell C | 65.76 | 32.48 | 41 | 7.70 |
| Vodacom | 71.13 | 17.27 | 31 | 7.55 |
| Telkom | 52.56 | 12.14 | 30 | 6.05 |
| Rain | 22.27 | 11.32 | 28 | 4.16 |
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