A recently concluded report by Ookla shows that MTN South Africa delivered the fastest median download speeds across the whole of Africa at 65.95 Mbps in Q2 2022. However, Vodacom in Johannesburg was the fastest operator considering speeds across top cities, reaching 81.36 Mbps median download speed in Q2 2022. In South Africa, MTN outperformed Vodacom in terms of median mobile speeds during Q2 2022.
In Kenya, Vodacom subsidiary Safaricom won the accolade vis a vis Airtel, in Tanzania, there was no clear winner as Vodacom won the download speed and Airtel the upload. Safaricom is the largest operator in Kenya by a mile, with 67.1% market share (equivalent to 42.7 million connections) ahead of Airtel 25.9% (16.4 million). Safaricom also exhibited better network performance during Q2 2022, with a median download speed of 36.25 Mbps and upload of 13.83 Mbps, compared to Airtel (28.58 Mbps download speed and 8.44 Mbps upload).
Comparing Airtel and MTN’s performance across the three countries they operate in, Airtel took the top spot in Nigeria, both in terms of median download and upload speed in Q2 2022. MTN Nigeria commanded 38.9% of Nigeria’s mobile users, with its 74.1 million subscribers almost double that of Airtel’s 46.0 million. Yet when it comes to mobile performance, Airtel Nigeria was ahead of MTN; in Q2 2022, Airtel Nigeria recorded a median download speed of 30.35 Mbps and a median upload speed of 10.28 Mbps, both of which topped those of MTN (26.30 Mbps download and 9.13 Mbps upload).
In Uganda and Rwanda there were no winners. Such was the case in Botswana too, where there was no winner between Mascom and Orange.
In Côte d’Ivoire, MTN took the market lead versus Orange in Q2 2022, whereas in Guinea, the situation was reversed and Orange took the top spot.
In the DRC, which is host to three of the operator groups, there was no winner overall, although Orange was the top player in terms of download speeds.
During Q2 2022, South African network performance has been affected by load shedding, which resulted in consumer reporting not having signal and access to mobile internet according to Downdetector.
