The fastest 4G mobile network vendors in South Africa

MyBroadband speed test data for Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 shows that Huawei equipment offers users the best 4G performance.

This data is based on over 285,000 Android mobile speed tests conducted between 1 October 2023 and 31 March 2024.

MyBroadband’s speed test servers are hosted at Teraco’s vendor-neutral data centres to ensure a carrier-agnostic testing environment.

While 5G has seen uptake worldwide, 4G remains a prominent and far-reaching means of connectivity, including in South Africa.

Four vendors — Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE — provide radio equipment for South Africa’s mobile networks.

MTN uses Huawei, Ericsson, and ZTE equipment, while Vodacom and Rain split their networks between Huawei and Nokia.

The entire Telkom network makes use of Huawei equipment, making Huawei the only vendor used by all the South African networks.

Cell C no longer uses its own towers and relies on network infrastructure provided by Vodacom and MTN, enhancing its 4G service reach and quality.

4G results

While 5G provides users with a better network experience than 4G networks, most of South Africa still uses 4G.

These networks allow more users basic internet access and are also necessary for older devices that do not yet support 5G.

Huawei’s equipment on the MTN network provided the highest average download speed of 69Mbps, while ZTE and Ericsson achieved 59Mbps and 54Mbps, respectively.

Huawei was also the best performer on Vodacom, where it closely beat Nokia with 54Mbps compared to 52Mbps.

Huawei also performed better on the Rain network than the Nokia equipment.

The table below shows the average test speeds for each vendor’s equipment on different mobile networks without 5G.