South African mobile users spend far less time on 5G than their counterparts in markets like India, and new analysis from network measurement firm Opensignal has blamed operator deployment decisions rather than any shortcoming in the technology itself.

In the first quarter of 2026, South Africans spent just 3.7% of their connected time on 5G, the company found. Even users carrying a 5G-capable handset spent only 11.1% of their time on the newer network technology, against 86.1% on 4G – close to eight times more.

When users do reach 5G, the uplift is substantial. Opensignal recorded average 5G download speeds of 196.4Mbit/s in the quarter, almost five times the 39.4Mbit/s measured on 4G. Upload averaged 22.5Mbit/s against 8.1Mbit/s for 4G, and the firm’s Consistent Quality metric – the share of time a network meets the demands of common apps – sat at 81% on 5G versus 66.2% on 4G, an advantage of more than 15 percentage points.

The issue, then, is not whether 5G works but how often subscribers reach it. Opensignal cited data from communications regulator Icasa puts 5G population coverage at 58% in 2025, up from 46.6% a year earlier, with roll-out concentrated in urban areas. Yet device-equipped users still spend the overwhelming majority of their time on 4G – which, Opensignal argued, effectively rules out handsets as the main constraint. Entry-level 5G phones are now widely available across the market.

The explanation, the firm said, lies in which spectrum operators have switched to 5G. Icasa’s 2022 auction handed operators access to 700MHz, 800MHz, 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz. But in the first quarter of 2026, mid-band was doing almost all the work: 3.5GHz traffic was entirely 5G, while 2.6GHz acted as a transition band at 23% 5G and 77% 4G. The low-band won at the same auction tells the opposite story – 700MHz was 99.7% 4G and 800MHz 100% 4G.

Capacity > coverage

The two bands do different jobs: mid-band delivers high speeds in good conditions but struggles more to penetrate buildings and reach the edges of cells while low-band travels further and works better indoors. Opensignal’s conclusion is that South Africa has built a 5G capacity layer without the coverage layer needed to keep users on it, so 5G becomes something subscribers pass through briefly rather than a network they stay connected to.

The reasons operators have been slow to “refarm” low-band are reasonably well understood. Those frequencies still carry the bulk of LTE traffic, and shifting them to 5G means pulling capacity away from the network most subscribers actually rely on.

Read: South Africa’s 5G boom is bypassing rural areas: Icasa

The economics of low-band 5G, the maturity of the device ecosystem on those bands and the limited spectrum depth at 700MHz and 800MHz all weigh on the decision. Opensignal’s measurements capture what spectrum carries which traffic, not the commercial calculations behind it.

The company points to India as a contrast. Indian users spent 34.6% of their connected time on 5G in the first quarter of the year, against South Africa’s 3.7%. Part of that reflects differences in scale and roll-out pace, but India has also given low-band a visible 5G role where South Africa has not. The takeaway, Opensignal says, is that 5G scales fastest when mid-band capacity is paired with low-band reach.