South African mobile 4G network speed comparison — 2020 vs 2024

Average 4G download speeds in South Africa have risen by over 40% in the last five years, upload speeds have improved by 31% over the same period, and latency has improved by 8%.

This is according to research into South Africa’s network speeds conducted by MyBroadband Insights.

MyBroadband Insights used data collected from the MyBroadband Speed Test app, comprising over 6.1 million speed tests performed over 4G connections during the five-year period.

The MyBroadband Speed Test app is a popular tool used by millions of South Africans every year to test their broadband speeds.

Its popularity is driven by the fact that the app is free to download from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store — and it is ad-free, making it incredibly user-friendly.

After testing their network speeds — mobile or Wi-Fi — South Africans can use the app to rate the performance of their ISP.

These tests provide MyBroadband Insights with a huge amount of data that gives valuable insight into broadband network performance across South Africa.

MyBroadband Insights used this data to assess the performance of 4G networks across the country over the last five years.

Our results showed that download speeds in South Africa had improved from 37.1Mbps in 2020 to 53.5Mbps in 2024 — a 44.2% increase.

Upload speeds increased 31% from 13.7Mbps to 17.9Mbps. They remained relatively constant from 2020 until 2023 (between 13.7Mbps and 14.4Mbps), before jumping a significant 24.5% in 2024.

The difference in latency over the five-year period was minimal, showing only a 7.6% improvement from 35.4ms to 32.7ms.

Interestingly, although the average latency improved over the five-year period, it slowed by 15% to 39.8ms from 2021 to 2022, before recovering again.

The graphs below show the average download speeds, upload speeds, and latency of 4G broadband in South Africa since 2020.

4G download and upload speeds

4G latency