{"id":574572,"date":"2025-01-02T06:59:04","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T04:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=574572"},"modified":"2025-01-02T07:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T05:00:07","slug":"south-africas-mobile-data-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/574572-south-africas-mobile-data-monsters.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s mobile data monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s hungriest mobile data users consumed well over 2,000 gigabytes of data per month in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of the country’s cellular networks have reported significant increases in mobile data traffic in the past year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest operator \u2014 Vodacom \u2014 told MyBroadband that it recorded a 32.4% year-on-year increase for the six-month period ended 30 September 2024, its last reported financial period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The growth was supported by smartphone penetration and network quality, with data customers reaching 27 million, up 4.8%,” the mobile network said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of specific trends, Vodacom said its Internet-connected devices grew 5.8% to 32 million, while 4G and 5G devices increased by 7.9% to 23.9 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This resulted in an increase in data usage with the average usage per smart device increasing by 26.9% to 4.7GB per month.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vodacom’s heaviest data consumer during its last reported financial period was a Home Internet TopUp user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vodacom offers no uncapped Internet packages directly but several of its Home Internet TopUp packages offer copious amounts of data at affordable prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, subscribers can get a 100Mbps 4G plan with 2,000GB or two terabytes (TB) monthly data for R549 per month. Once they reach their threshold, they can top up with more data at discounted rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vodacom Home Internet customer with the highest usage consumed 16,100GB or 16.1TB of mobile data over six months, working out to an average of 2,680GB or 2.68TB per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that usage were sustained over an entire year, the user would consume about 32.2TB annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For reference, the biggest mobile data consumer on Vodacom’s network last year used roughly 28.47TB, 11.6% less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telkom’s biggest data consumer was not far off that figure, munching through an average of 2.44TB data per month from January 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The customer was on one of Telkom’s Unlimited 4G products, which offer uncapped mobile data at either 10Mbps or 20Mbps speeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Vodacom and Telkom had several other users that also consumed over 2TB of data per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telkom also listed the online apps which saw the biggest increases in data traffic year-on-year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. WhatsApp \u2014 Up 648%<\/mark><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. TikTok \u2014 Up 601%<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. YouTube \u2014 Up 580%<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Netflix \u2014 Up 571%<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Facebook \u2014 Up 569%<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Instagram \u2014 Up 486%<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Social media apps dominated Telkom’s mobile data traffic in 2024. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Cell C said its heaviest data users consumed an average of 1.06TB per month in the past six months. All of them were using its legacy Home Connecta 1TB package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The mobile network said its total data traffic and average consumption per user rose by 15% and 19% year over year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    “The notable change in traffic is attributed to compelling data offers present in both our package
    and bundle options, providing customers with exceptional value at competitive prices,” Cell C said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    WhatsApp, TikTok and Facebook remained the biggest contributors to data traffic on Cell C’s network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    MTN would not provide data consumption for specific users as it regarded this to be competitively sensitive information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The company did share that its highest traffic users were on its fixed plans such as MyMTN Home Wi-Fi, which are sold across its consumer, enterprise, and wholesale segments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It also said that video streaming traffic was dominant, particularly on its fixed-home products, where it made up more than 50% of consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    South Africa’s other two major mobile networks \u2014 Cell C and Rain \u2014 did not provide feedback by the time of publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Below is the average monthly usage of Vodacom and Telkom’s biggest data consumers in 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Mobile network<\/th>Package<\/th>Monthly average<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
    Vodacom <\/td>Home Internet TopUp<\/td>2.68TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Telkom<\/td>Unlimited 4G 20Mbps or 10Mbps<\/td>2.44TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Telkom<\/td>Unlimited 4G 20Mbps or 10Mbps<\/td>2.43TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Vodacom<\/td>Home Internet TopUp<\/td>2.20TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Vodacom<\/td>Prepaid Home Internet<\/td>2.20TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Vodacom<\/td>Home Internet TopUp<\/td>2.16TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Telkom<\/td>Unlimited 4G 20Mbps or 10Mbps<\/td>2.09TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Vodacom<\/td>Home InternetTopUp<\/td>2.06TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Telkom<\/td>Unlimited 4G 20Mbps or 10Mbps<\/td>2.04TB<\/td><\/tr>
    Telkom<\/td>Unlimited 4G 20Mbps or 10Mbps<\/td>1.53TB<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Mobile data consumption continued to surge in South Africa in 2024. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":569619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[91415,355,3610,67250,33997,42,43716,109,41],"class_list":["post-574572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-biggest-mobile-data-users","tag-cell-c","tag-mobile-data","tag-mobile-network-operators","tag-mobile-networks","tag-mtn","tag-rain","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574572"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577018,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574572\/revisions\/577018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}