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%.

Further, according to South Africa’s telecommunications regulator the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), 5G population coverage reached 58% in 2025, up from 46.6% a year earlier, with rollout concentrated in urban areas.

“Device affordability is not the barrier either; entry-level 5G handsets are now widely available across South Africa,” said Opensignal, noting that the technology delivers and 5G-enabled handsets are already owned; the challenge is making that experience available more often.

“The constraint is how often the network actually delivers 5G and that comes down to which spectrum operators have put it on.”

Icasa's 2022 auction gave operators access to 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz.

However, in the first quarter of 2026, mid-band carried almost all observed 5G traffic, while the low-band 700 MHz and 800 MHz remained almost entirely on 4G.

In the first quarter of 2026, 3.5 GHz use was entirely 5G, while 2.6 GHz acted as the main transition band, 23% on 5G, 77% still on 4G. By contrast, the low-band coverage layer remains LTE-led: 700 MHz was 99.7% 4G and 800 MHz 100% 4G.

“The low-band frequencies that would push 5G indoors and into weaker signal areas are still overwhelmingly on LTE, which is a deployment choice, not a spectrum gap.”

This means that South Africa has built a 5G capacity layer, not a 5G coverage layer.

Opensignal highlighted India, for example, as a useful benchmark, comparing the outcomes of the different spectrum strategies.

Both South Africa and India use mid-band as their main 5G capacity layer, but India has given low-band a visible 5G role.

“Indian users spent 34.6% of their time on 5G in the first quarter of 2026, against 3.7% in South Africa. Part of that gap reflects differences in scale and rollout pace. But low-band 5G matters: it accounts for a meaningful share of India's 5G readings, against almost none in South Africa,” Opensignal explained.

That reach keeps users on 5G longer and indoors, exactly where South Africa's mid-band layer loses them.

“The lesson is not that India is a model to copy. It is that 5G scales fastest when mid-band capacity is paired with low-band reach,” it continued, pointing out that South Africa's 5G story is not about proving the technology works. The first quarter 2026 data settles that. It is about why a network that performs this well reaches so few users, so rarely, and the answer sits in operator deployment decisions, not in spectrum availability or device penetration.

“Until low-band moves to 5G, the everyday mobile experience stays on 4G. The stronger network is already there. It is just not switched on for most people,” Opensignal concluded.