{"id":658422,"date":"2026-07-16T20:25:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=658422"},"modified":"2026-07-16T20:25:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T18:25:39","slug":"vodacom-goes-from-hero-to-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/658422-vodacom-goes-from-hero-to-zero.html","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom goes from hero to zero"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

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

Knott-Craig, an engineer, was not happy with anything other than being the best. He even wrote a book titled \u201cSecond is Nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

He passed this drive for excellence to former CEO Pieter Uys and CTO Andries Delport, who would not settle for second-best either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

However, in time, the drive to be exceptional fizzled out. Vodacom became a follower rather than a leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last few years, MTN\u2019s network team, led by Zoltan Miklos, has dominated network quality in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

There are still pockets of excellence at the company, like Vodacom Business, which is the best Enterprise Telecoms Provider<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Vodacom is now worse than Cell C<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband Insights released its Q2 2026 Mobile Network Quality Report<\/a> on Thursday, 16 July 2026, which shows that Vodacom has plummeted to third place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband Insights\u2019 network quality rankings reports are the most respected in the industry because of their scale and testing methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Q2 report is based on 360,000 speed tests conducted by thousands of mobile users across South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The testing combined crowdsourced data and dedicated drive tests to provide a comprehensive assessment of mobile network performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the drive testing, MyBroadband Insights travelled 20,000km and tested networks in South Africa\u2019s major cities, towns, and roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

It showed that MTN dominated the network quality rankings, followed by Cell C in second, and Vodacom in third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was unthinkable under Alan Knott-Craig and Pieter Uys has now happened. Vodacom is losing to Cell C in network quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Network Operator<\/strong><\/td>Download Speed (Mbps)<\/strong><\/td>Upload Speed (Mbps)<\/strong><\/td>Latency (ms)<\/strong><\/td>Network Quality Score<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
MTN<\/td>91.11<\/td>32.46<\/td>29<\/td>9.96<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Cell C<\/td>65.76<\/td>32.48<\/td>41<\/td>7.70<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Vodacom<\/td>71.13<\/td>17.27<\/td>31<\/td>7.55<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Telkom<\/td>52.56<\/td>12.14<\/td>30<\/td>6.05<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Rain<\/td>22.27<\/td>11.32<\/td>28<\/td>4.16<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":638586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2077822079823462519","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[681,337,355,42,281,41,685],"class_list":["post-658422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecoms","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-andries-delport","tag-cell-c","tag-mtn","tag-pieter-uys","tag-vodacom","tag-zoltan-miklos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658422"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658422"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658526,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658422\/revisions\/658526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}