Opensignal’s first report for 2019 is out, and the South Africa Mobile Network Experience looks at the relative performance of the big players in South African mobile connectivity and the state of their offerings.
Opensignal’s report looks at a number of metrics to determine which network is providing the best performance. However, the overall takeaway from the report seems to be that the two biggest players in South Africa are head and shoulders above the rest in the South African market.
MTN and Vodacom are dominating new and established technologies with CellC and Telkom some distance behind with their offerings. Some of the more significant results saw MTN and Vodacom tie for the Download Experience in South Africa award.
Vodacom won the award previously, but their performance has remained flat whereas MTN has managed to improve their rating by close to 2Mbps to catch Vodacom.
MTN is the first of the networks to score over 80% 4G coverage nationwide helping it to keep its lead in the 4G availability contest. MTN maintained a 5% lead over Vodacom for this category.
As an aside, Cape Town seems to be the place to be for 4G coverage, with all four operators scoring over 80% coverage there. Vodacom picked up the Upload Speed Experience and Latency Experience Award ahead of MTN.
Vodacom and MTN enjoy a significant advantage in almost every category that matters, and it’s unlikely to change as the two Network behemoths are able to leverage their large market share to invest into expanding and improving their network offerings.
If the trend continues, it’s likely that roaming agreements like the one between Telkom and MTN will become more prevalent as the smaller operators are forced to piggyback on 4G offerings.
This, of course, means even more revenue is going to the two biggest networks which will simply help them to further dominate the market.