MTN has South Africa’s best mobile network: new report

New independent research shows that MTN has South Africa’s best mobile network and beats its rivals in every category measured, from consistent quality to download and upload speeds.

According to a new report (PDF) by crowd-sourced data company Tutela, MTN leads rival Vodacom in all categories — excellent consistent quality, core consistent quality, download and upload throughput, and latency (or network round-trip times).

A connection that reaches the “excellent” threshold is sufficient for use cases such as 1080p (full-HD) video streaming and multiplayer gaming, while a “core” connection will stream standard-definition video or handle things like Web browsing or uploading photos to social media.

Vodacom came in a “healthy second place”, with only a 3.9% difference in “excellent consistent quality” and a 0.8% difference in “core consistent quality” for common coverage areas in South Africa, it said.

Telkom was placed third in the report and Cell C fourth.

MTN provides its users with an “excellent” connection in 80.6% of tests, it said. Tutela’s “excellent consistent quality” thresholds represent a range of use cases including real-time mobile online gaming, HD video streaming and group HD video calls.

“All operators in South Africa reached the threshold of 90% for ‘core consistent quality’, with MTN setting the benchmark at 95.9%, meaning nearly all successful connections should be able to support day-to-day uses like social media sharing, SD video streaming and general Web browsing,” Tutela said in a statement.

Tutela sources data from over 490 000 devices across South Africa to measure network quality from the end-user perspective.  — (c) 2020 NewsCentral Media