{"id":622415,"date":"2026-01-13T12:59:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T10:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=622415"},"modified":"2026-01-13T13:00:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:00:56","slug":"cell-c-not-matching-mtns-network-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/622415-cell-c-not-matching-mtns-network-performance.html","title":{"rendered":"Cell C not matching MTN’s network performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cell C’s mobile data network performs well according to national speed testing data, but was significantly slower than that of its supplier, MTN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband Insights recently investigated the data network performance that Cell C users can get on prepaid SIM cards running on the MTN network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell C switched off all of its tower infrastructure and migrated its prepaid customers<\/a> to a virtual radio access network provided by MTN. The migration was completed in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also has a more traditional roaming agreement with Vodacom. Cell C’s contract customers generally roam on Vodacom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The improvements from this move were clearly evident in MyBroadband Insights’ testing during 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the first time Vodacom had not been ranked as the country’s best or second-best network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN and Cell C 4G-only test<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
MyBroadband Insights test benches travel all around South Africa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this investigation, we analysed more than 100,000 tests conducted by one of our internal Samsung S23 test benches in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The test bench is driven throughout South Africa multiple times per year, covering all major cities and routes, as well as many smaller towns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tests are all down-sampled to individual network cells before calculating the average speeds achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This allows us to directly compare performance between the networks, even if one device performed more tests in an area than the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN outperformed Cell C on all the compared metrics, but Cell C still demonstrated excellent performance, with averages close to those of MTN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN achieved an average download speed of 85 Mbps, with an upload speed of 38 Mbps, and a low latency of only 26 ms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Cell C achieved an average of 70 Mbps for downloads, 32 Mbps for uploads, and a latency of 33 ms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Network<\/th>Average Download (Mbps)<\/th>Average Upload (Mbps)<\/th>Average Latency (ms)<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
MTN<\/strong><\/td>84.90<\/td>38.10<\/td>25.77<\/td><\/tr>
Cell C<\/strong><\/td>69.95<\/td>31.97<\/td>32.96<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MyBroadband Insights research has shown that Cell C is closing in on MTN’s performance, but is not quite matching it yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341074,"featured_media":622494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,42,60107],"class_list":["post-622415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-mtn","tag-mybroadband-insights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622415"}],"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\/341074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622415"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624942,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622415\/revisions\/624942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}