Government began its investigation into launching mobile telecommunications South Africa as early as 1991.

However, it would be another three years before South Africans would be able to make phone calls from a handheld mobile device (as opposed to the fixed-line telephones that dominated the telecommunications landscape at the time).

In 1993, two network operating licences were issued for commercial network services, with the first going to Vodacom – a joint venture involving state-owned Telkom, UK telecommunications giant Vodafone and Johann Rupert-linked investment firm VenFin.

Although there were many months of trials of the technology, Vodacom officially launched its commercial services on 1 June 1994 – with rival MTN following soon thereafter.

“The first commercial site carrying customer traffic was in Bronberg in Pretoria,” a Vodacom spokesman told TechCentral this week. “Motorola and Ericsson test sample devices were used to make the first call.”

Snapping at Vodacom’s heels was MTN – at first known as M-Cell – which launched commercial services around the same time. The race for dominance in South Africa’s mobile sector was on and the rivalry between Vodacom and MTN would come to shape the sector for decades to come.

Historic call

“The very first call on our network was initiated from a site in Cape Town known as Cape House to a mobile base station controller/mobile switching centre also located in Cape Town. This historic call, made using an Ericsson GH-197 cellphone, was part of a testing phase conducted before the official launch and was not a commercial call,” MTN South Africa told TechCentral via e-mail.

MTN was supported by technical experts from one of its shareholders, the UK’s Cable & Wireless, which in the 1980s became the first service provider to offer an alternative to British Telecom (now BT Group). Also supporting MTN staff were personnel from what became MultiChoice. “Among these trailblazers was Trevor Morris, MTN’s chief technology officer at the time,” said MTN.

Read: Half of South Africa’s population is now covered by 5G

After a trial, MTN established its first commercial site at the Naspers building in Cape Town where its first commercial cellular call was made. Overseeing this “critical milestone” was Gladstone Nutt, a switching engineer seconded from MultiChoice.

Andre Prinsloo, who travelled from Johannesburg, played an instrumental role in activating the site with Nutt. Dick Edwards, at the time the regional network manager for the Western Cape at Cable & Wireless, was another key member of the team.

The first commercial call on MTN’s network was made on an Ericsson GH-197 cellphone

According to MTN, the second site to go live was at IGI House in the Johannesburg CBD, with Richard Black serving as the radio engineer responsible for the site’s activation. At commercial launch, MTN’s network consisted of five sites in the key cities of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban – the foundation on which the company’s multinational footprint spanning 19 markets in Africa and the Middle East was built.

The use of Ericsson devices in South Africa’s first mobile calls marked its place in history, but the company’s presence in the mobile handset market would quickly dwindle, with networking equipment proving more lucrative. European companies dominated the equipment market in those early days. Vodacom’s first suppliers, for example, were the German and French companies Siemens and Alcatel. That market, however, is now dominated by Chinese vendors, notably Huawei Technologies.

Read: The most iconic Nokia phones ever made

South Africa’s mobile carrier sector remained a duopoly until the launch of Cell C in November 2001. Another shake-up would follow in 2010 when, after selling its 50% stake in Vodacom, Telkom launched its own mobile carrier called 8ta, which was later renamed Telkom Mobile.

Get breaking news from TechCentral on WhatsApp. Sign up here.