MTN maintains best network position in MyBroadband quarterly tests
Telecommunications giant MTN continues its dominance in overall network performance during the first quarter of 2026.
Consistently outperforming its competitors across the most important metrics in MyBroadband Insights’ first quarter 2026 Mobile Network Quality Report, MTN maintained its title of South Africa’s best mobile network, with a network quality score of 9.77.
The findings are based on more than 315 000 speed tests conducted by mobile users, including a combination of crowdsourced data and dedicated drive tests of 20 000 km across South Africa’s major cities, towns and roads.
The outcomes revealed that MTN had the highest average download speed at 83.01 Mb/s, upload speed of 28.15 Mb/s and latency of 29 ms.
MTN was also the top-performing network in major metropolitans, including Tshwane, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini and Mangaung.
The report attributed MTN’s strong performance to continued investment in infrastructure for both LTE and 5G networks.
Vodacom took second place overall, revealing a strong 5G performance which had offset its lower 4G performance. The group’s network quality score was 7.95 as a result of a download speed of 70.69 Mb/s, upload speed of 15.52 Mb/s and latency of 30 ms.
Meanwhile, Cell C, in third place with a network quality score of 7.85, recorded a download speed of 62.02 Mb/s, upload speed of 29 Mb/s and latency of 39 ms.
Cell C is performing well owing to its great upload speeds, but is being held back by its lack of 5G support, the first-quarter report pointed out.
In fourth position, Telkom recorded an overall score of 6.42, with a download speed of 51.55 Mb/s, upload speed of 11.74 Mb/s and latency of 28 ms.
Rain achieved a network quality score of 4.35, with download speeds of 22.01 Mb/s, upload speeds of 10.97 Mb/s and latency of 27 ms.
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