South Africa's mobile industry continues to evolve rapidly, and the latest Opensignal Mobile Network Experience Report for August 2025 shows MTN leading the market in most performance categories. The report, which analyzed network quality between May 1 and July 29, assessed the performance of the country's five main operators - MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, Cell C, and Rain - across multiple aspects of consumer connectivity.
MTN emerged as the clear winner, taking home 11 out of 15 possible awards. Seven of these were outright wins, while four were shared with competitors. Most notably, MTN secured all four of the Overall Experience awards and four of the five 5G Experience categories. The operator also won the 5G Availability Award, with users connected to 5G 12.4 percent of the time, a notable increase from 11.5 percent in the previous report. This performance reflects MTN's continued investment in its 5G rollout, which now spans over 4,000 sites covering 44 percent of the population, with the company targeting 60 percent coverage by the end of 2025.
Vodacom, however, continued to hold a strong position in coverage and speed. It outperformed rivals to win both coverage awards outright, scoring 8.0 on a 10-point scale for overall coverage and improving its 5G Coverage Experience from 1.7 to 2.0. The company also maintained its lead in 5G download speeds, not only outperforming MTN nationwide but also delivering the fastest speeds in all nine provinces. On average, Vodacom's 5G users enjoyed speeds more than 60 Mbps faster than MTN's, cementing its dominance in this category.
