MTN South Africa plans to offer 4G smartphones that cost “from R99” to 1.2 million of its prepaid customers as part of work to shift the country from older 2G and 3G technologies.
The initiative will be executed in three phases commencing in May 2025 until the end of 2026, MTN said in a statement on Monday. One of the conditions for receiving the device is that it can only be used with an MTN Sim card.
“In phase 1, 5 000 carefully selected customers will be offered 4G smartphones. The selection will be based on usage profiles, spending patterns and tenure, and will mainly be in Gauteng,” the company said.
“In phase 2, more than 130 000 customers nationally will be offered the devices. In the third phase, more than 1.1 million MTN customers across the country will benefit.”
The devices will come pre-loaded with a variety of applications. MTN didn’t say if WhatsApp — the de facto messaging app owned by Meta Platforms and used by millions of South Africans daily — was among them.
MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi said: “Regardless of where they live, we want to ensure that all South Africans can access the digital world.”
MTN has partnered with Smartphone For All, founded by Babatunde Osho, a former CEO of Metrofile Nigeria who also served as chief enterprise solutions executive at MTN Nigeria. Osho holds an MBA from Imperial College Management School and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has also completed executive programmes at Wharton Business School, Oxford Said Business School and IMD Business School.
Driving down costs
The company told TechCentral that the low-cost 4G devices won’t be limited to one model — a variety of smartphones will be offered through the initiative.
For phase 1, MTN is distributing a 5.5-inch model from Itel that normally sells for R740, though it hasn’t provided the exact device details. The Itel model has a five-inch FWVGA display, 32GB ROM, 4GB RAM, dual Sim slots, two cameras (2-megapixel and 4-megapixel) and runs Android 14 Go. For the other brands, the cost ranges between R800 and R1 100/device, and MTN didn’t disclose how much those devices would be subsidised.
The initiative comes as South Africa plans a total shutdown of 2G and 3G networks by December 2027 to free up radio frequencies for faster 4G and 5G networks.
Critics of the plan had argued that phasing 2G and 3G networks risked exacerbating the digital divide as many low-income consumers, particularly those in remote areas, may not be able to afford smartphones designed for faster networks. This in turn would mean a drop in customer numbers for mobile operators and lower revenue.
MTN South Africa will incur operational costs of between R150 and R190/device through courier costs, call centre, marketing and incentives, it said.
The move by MTN comes six months after rival Vodacom South Africa announced it was introducing a 4G “smartphone” for R249.
The Mobicel S4-branded phone, which Vodacom described as a “cloud-based handset”, was introduced to “reduce the cost of smartphone access in the country” and to migrate more of the operator’s customers to 4G.
Read: And now for the R200 4G ‘smartphone’
“The cloud phone will help customers still anchored to 2G phones and not familiar with the touch-screen experience, allowing them to appreciate a smooth transition to the data and application world,” said Davide Tacchino, managing executive for terminals at Vodacom South Africa in a statement at the time.
South Africa’s mobile operators are under pressure to migrate legacy 2G and 3G users to more modern technology so the spectrum can be freed up for more advanced technologies, including 4G and 5G.
Vodacom last year cited a 2022 Vodafone-funded report by the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development in 2022, which argued that lowering the cost of devices was key to increasing access to smartphones.
“The Alliance for Affordable Internet estimates that a smartphone priced at US$62 could cost almost 63% of the average monthly income across Africa. The Broadband Commission’s report recommended that so-called thin-client phones – like the new cloud-based phone which Vodacom has delivered – should be explored. The new cloud-based phone leverages the power of cloud computing to deliver a range of features typically associated with entry smartphones at a more affordable cost.” – © 2025 NewsCentral Media, with additional reporting by Nqobile Dludla, (c) 2025 Reuters
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