Cell C’s decision to shut down its own radio access network in favour of an outsourced model is paying dividends.
South Africa’s fourth-largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers has received global recognition for the scale of its network quality improvement in the past year.
According to OpenSignal’s Global Mobile Network Experience Awards 2025, Cell C is a “global rising star” in the video and upload speed categories among countries like South Africa that have a large land area of more than 200 000 square kilometres.
Now in its sixth iteration, the OpenSignal report looked at mobile user experience data across the world from 1 July to 17 December 2024.
“We award operators the titles of ‘global winners’ and ‘global leaders’ for outstanding user experience and recognise the operators on which our users have seen the greatest improvement in mobile experience between the second half of 2023 and the second half of 2024 as ‘global rising stars’,” OpenSignal said in the report.
“Cell C users saw the second largest percentage improvement in upload speed experience – a rise of 70.8% – putting it behind only Movilnet Venezuela’s increase of 138.2%.”
Cell C has in recent years been recognised for its improved network quality following its decision to relinquish its last-mile network infrastructure assets and effectively “roam”, using its own spectrum, on infrastructure provided by MTN and Vodacom. The move has had the impact of dramatically lowering Cell C’s capital expenditure requirements, allowing it to focus on customer service and other areas that give it an advantage over its rivals.
‘Real competition’
The migration of its prepaid, contract and MVNO customer base from its own infrastructure was completed in June 2023. Just over a year later, in September 2024, CEO Jorge Mendes told TechCentral that the roaming model was beneficial to both Cell C and its rivals because it created an additional revenue stream for MTN and Vodacom while putting Cell C in much stronger position in terms of network quality, thereby “allowing real competition to flourish in the market”.
The company is now taking the roaming concept a step further by introducing a multi-operator core network (Mocn) platform. According to chief technology officer Schalk Visser who spoke to TechCentral at a Media event last October, Mocn roaming is a virtual representation of Cell C’s network that allows users to have an experience akin to Cell C’s native infrastructure even though they are roaming on MTN or Vodacom.
Read: Cell C 5G launch in South Africa is imminent
On the backend, the system gives Cell C more control over the network, offering the option to move customers from one roaming partner to another in different areas depending on which has better coverage, said Visser.
“This ground-breaking model has propelled Cell C’s network footprint forward by 20 years,” claimed Visser. “We now have access to best-in-class infrastructure, can benefit from scale, and have simultaneously reduced our network expenses and capital expenditure on costly infrastructure.”
Last week, Cell C announced plans to launch 5G services in South Africa, also using its roaming partners for network infrastructure support. According to the OpenSignal report, users worldwide report – unsurprisingly, perhaps – that they enjoy improved network experience following a 5G migration.
Read: Why is South Africa still importing 2G phones?
“This evolution is not just about adding new technology – it is also about transitioning away from older ones. Operators worldwide are increasingly shutting down their legacy 2G and 3G networks to improve energy efficiency, simplify network management and repurpose valuable spectrum bands to improve the 4G and 5G experience of their users,” OpenSignal said in its report. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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