Cell C launches commercial 5G in South Africa's major cities

A 5G icon can now appear on a Cell C phone in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg or Gqeberha. The South African carrier quietly launched its commercial 5G network late last week, with no launch event, and says customers with a 5G handset in a covered area are already connected.

Cell C is taking a different route from operators that build a dedicated radio network. It uses roaming agreements with MTN and Vodacom, rather than constructing its own new 5G sites. The company had already deactivated its physical towers and radio access network — the equipment that links phones to the mobile network — during a 2023 migration to a virtualized network enabled by MTN.

Cell C still supplies the 5G core, the central systems that run the service. Jorge Mendes, the company’s CEO, told Tech Central that Cell C has access to all of Vodacom’s and MTN’s 5G sites, including those using the 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz spectrum bands. He described the result as “the widest 5G coverage in the country at the moment,” a claim made by the carrier rather than independently tested in the report.

And so what, concretely? A Cell C customer with a compatible phone can use 5G wherever the partner networks provide coverage, without waiting for Cell C to build a separate tower footprint. The short-term benefit may be less dramatic than the network label suggests: Mendes said 5G will not offer a huge difference from 4G for consumers. Another use case could be fixed wireless access — using the mobile network to connect homes or businesses.

The launch came as Cell C reported ZAR 12.64 billion in total group revenue for 2026, up 14 percent year-on-year, and 8.884 million customers. That figure excludes 5.713 million mobile virtual network operator subscribers using Cell C’s network; the financial results show a growing base, but they do not establish how many customers will use 5G.