South Africans are still spending nearly eight times more connected time on 4G networks, despite the increasing coverage, handset availability and better performance of 5G networks, Opensignal’s first-quarter data has revealed.
While South Africa was an early African 5G mover, with launches in 2019 and 2020, users equipped with 5G-capable devices spent just 11.1% of their connected time on 5G in the first quarter of 2026, and 86.1% on 4G, which still anchors the daily mobile experience.
Opensignal said the data indicates a network reach challenge, not an adoption or performance one.
When users connect to 5G, they experience faster speeds, with the average 5G download speeds, at 196.4 Mb/s, nearly five times faster than 4G’s speeds of 39.4 Mb/s.
The quality gap is also clear, with 5G’s consistent quality, the share of time the network meets the demands of common apps, more than 15% percentage points higher, at 81%, than 4G’s 66.2%.
