How South Africa communicates: channels, users, value and who profits
Sources: ICASA State of the ICT Sector 2025; Stats SA GHS 2024; DataReportal Digital 2026; Vodacom, MTN and Telkom results; ICASA call termination regulations. Details and caveats below.
South Africans have never had more ways to reach each other — or to reach a business. A phone call, an SMS, a WhatsApp, an email, a USSD menu and a Teams meeting now all compete for the same moment of attention. But they do not earn the same money, they are not used by the same people, and they are not equally profitable for the networks that carry them or the resellers that package them. This piece pulls together the most recent public data on who uses what, why, how much it is worth, and where the margin actually sits.
A note on sources: figures below come from ICASA's State of the ICT Sector Report 2025 (data to 31 March 2025), Stats SA's General Household Survey 2024, DataReportal's Digital 2026: South Africa, and operator annual results. Where the public data runs out we say so, rather than guess.
The channels, at a glance
| Channel | Reach | Direction of travel |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile (voice, SMS, data) | 116.8m subscriptions | Growing — up 7.5% in a year; 82.7m are smartphones (+10.4%) |
| ~28–29m users | Near-universal among internet users; the default for personal messaging | |
| Internet (any means) | 51.7m users (79.6%) | Growing slowly, +2.1% a year |
| Fixed broadband | 2.7m subscriptions | Nearly doubled in a year (from 1.4m); 2.4m of those are fibre |
| Landline at home | 3.4% of households | Collapsed from 25.5% in 2002 |
| Facebook Messenger | 6.45m users | A distant second to WhatsApp |
The headline is simple: the mobile phone won. 96.1% of households own one, against 3.4% with a landline. Everything else — voice, SMS, WhatsApp, banking, email — now rides on the handset in someone's pocket.
Who is connected: the demographic picture
Access is the first filter on which channel a person can use. Voice and SMS reach almost everyone with a SIM; WhatsApp, email and video need data, and data access is not evenly spread.
Household internet access by province
Source: Stats SA, General Household Survey 2024 — share of households with internet access by any means.
How households get online
Source: Stats SA, General Household Survey 2024. Categories overlap — a household can have more than one.
Three patterns matter for anyone choosing how to reach customers:
- Urban vs rural. 69.9% of South Africans live in urban areas. The provinces with the largest rural populations — Limpopo and the Eastern Cape — have the lowest internet access, which means a data-only channel silently excludes a large share of those customers. SMS and USSD still reach them.
- Gender and income. Research ICT Africa's 2025 After Access survey finds basic-phone ownership is similar for men and women, but rural, lower-income and less-educated women are less likely to own a smartphone or be online. The gap is in data, not in the SIM.
- Age. The median South African is 28.7 years old, and 64.8% of adults use social media. There is no reliable published breakdown of messaging or voice use by age band in South Africa — anyone quoting one is estimating.
What each channel is used for
No official body publishes South African message volumes split by purpose, so the table below is our reading of where each channel dominates, based on the ICASA revenue trends, operator results and what we see across Telecloud's own customer base. Treat it as a guide, not a statistic.
| Purpose | Primary channel | Also used |
|---|---|---|
| Personal and family | WhatsApp (text, voice notes, calls) | Voice calls, SMS where data is short |
| One-time PINs and security alerts | SMS | WhatsApp authentication messages, app push |
| Transactional notices (deliveries, statements, bookings) | SMS, email | WhatsApp utility messages |
| Marketing | SMS, email, social media | WhatsApp marketing messages, RCS (early) |
| Customer service | Voice (call centres), WhatsApp | Email, web chat |
| Banking without data | USSD | SMS |
| Internal business | Email, Teams/Zoom, WhatsApp groups | Cloud PBX extensions |
The big banks, Takealot, FlySafair and the networks themselves all run customer service on the WhatsApp Business Platform now. Two things are worth knowing about that shift. First, SMS is not dying — business-to-person messaging is growing because OTPs and alerts need something that works on every phone, with or without data. Second, WhatsApp for business is not free: from 1 October 2026, Meta bills service conversations beyond the first 1,000 a month per business number at utility rates.
Volume and value: where the rands are
South Africa's telecoms sector turned over R232 billion in 2024, up 11.7% from R208 billion the year before (R271 billion including broadcasting and postal). But the growth is not evenly shared.
| Revenue line (2024) | Change year on year |
|---|---|
| Text and multimedia messaging (SMS/MMS) | +10.6% |
| Mobile services overall | +10.2% |
| Data services | +8.9% |
| Voice services | −5.7% |
| Fixed-line calls | −15.1% |
| Fixed-line subscriptions | −22.4% |
Messaging revenue is growing faster than data, and with personal chat long since moved to WhatsApp, that growth is best explained by business-to-person traffic — OTPs, alerts and campaigns — rather than people texting each other. Estimates of the South African A2P messaging market vary widely, from about US$0.5 billion (Grand View Research, 2025) to US$1.4 billion (MarketsAndMarkets, 2024), growing 4–6% a year. The spread tells you how opaque this market is; the direction is not in doubt.
Traffic is growing much faster than revenue. Vodacom South Africa's data traffic rose 36.4% in its 2025 financial year, MTN SA's 23% and Telkom's mobile broadband usage 24.1% — all well ahead of the 9% growth in data revenue. The price of each megabyte keeps falling.
Network profitability: what the operators earn
| Operator | Latest results | What stands out |
|---|---|---|
| Vodacom SA (FY to Mar 2025) | Service revenue +2.3% | Voice revenue actually grew 7.6% to R14bn (11.6% of service revenue). "Beyond mobile" — fintech, IoT, fixed — is R11.2bn, or 17.8%. |
| MTN SA (FY 2025) | Service revenue +2.0%; EBITDA margin 35.8% | Voice revenue −2.8% (prepaid −4.4%, postpaid +4.4%). Margin guidance cut to 35–37%. |
| Telkom (FY to Mar 2025) | Revenue R43.9bn (+3.3%); EBITDA R11.8bn (+25.1%) | Mobile service revenue +10.2%; fibre is 82% of Openserve revenue. Target margin 25–27%. |
Three conclusions follow for the networks:
- Voice is a managed decline. Industry-wide voice revenue is shrinking. Vodacom's growth is the exception, carried by postpaid and bundles; prepaid voice is falling everywhere.
- Termination income is being regulated away. ICASA has cut the rate one mobile network pays another to end a call from 9c to 7c a minute (1 July 2025), then 5c (1 July 2026) and 4c (1 July 2027), with fixed rates heading towards 1c. That squeezes a traditionally lucrative wholesale line — and makes on-net and VoIP calling cheaper for everyone downstream.
- The margin has moved to data, fibre and platforms. The biggest EBITDA gain of the three, Telkom's +25%, came from fibre and mobile data. Vodacom's fastest-growing slice is financial services and IoT, not calls.
Reseller profitability: where a reseller makes money
Networks own the infrastructure. Resellers own the customer relationship, the bundle and the support. Reseller margins are not officially published in South Africa, so the figures below are market indications, labelled as such.
| Product | Typical economics | Margin profile |
|---|---|---|
| Bulk SMS | Wholesale from about R0.15–R0.18 per SMS at volume; retail R0.23–R0.29 | Roughly 30–40% gross; thin per message, strong at scale. One published example: R10,000 a month profit on 100,000 messages. |
| Cloud PBX / hosted voice | Per-seat monthly subscription plus call minutes | High on the seat — international reseller programmes quote 60–70% — with minutes close to cost. Recurring and sticky. |
| Voice minutes | Priced off wholesale termination, now falling to 4–5c a minute | Low and shrinking; best sold inside a bundle, not on its own. |
| WhatsApp Business API | Meta per-message rates for SA: marketing ≈ US$0.038; utility ≈ US$0.0076; authentication quoted at US$0.0076–0.014 | Resellers usually pass Meta's fees through at cost and charge a platform or management fee instead. |
| Fibre, LTE, mobile data | Negotiated wholesale agreements | Not publicly disclosed; generally modest, earned on volume and retention. |
The pattern is the mirror image of the networks'. Commodity traffic — minutes, megabytes, individual messages — earns the reseller very little, because its price is set by regulators and by the four big networks competing on price. The money is in the recurring layer on top: the PBX seat, the managed WhatsApp number, the SMS platform with its API, reporting and support. A customer who buys a bundle of those rarely leaves over a cent per minute.
Wholesale deals: what MVNOs and resellers actually get
Between the four big networks and the end customer sits a growing layer of brands that do not own a network at all — the mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) such as Capitec Connect, FNB Connect and Mr Price Mobile, and thousands of resellers selling airtime, SMS, fibre and cloud telephony. How much they pay the network determines how much they can earn.
MVNOs: who hosts whom
| Host network | Examples of MVNOs it carries | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cell C | Capitec Connect, FNB Connect, Shoprite K'nect, Me&You, Clientele, Purple Mobile, Hello | Hosts most MVNOs in the country. Its wholesale division earned about R1.8bn in FY26 (+20%) on 5.7m MVNO lines (+27%). |
| MTN | Standard Bank Connect, Nedbank Connect, Pick n Pay Mobile, TFG Connect, Spar Mobile | Standard Bank moved over from Cell C in 2024. Wholesale priced by guaranteed quality: cheaper capacity at a lower guaranteed speed. |
| Vodacom | Mr Price Mobile | Launched its own MVNO enabler platform in September 2024. |
| Telkom | New entrants from 2025 | Spectrum licence conditions require each network to host at least three MVNOs. |
What discount does an MVNO get?
No South African network publishes its wholesale rates — they are negotiated privately. What is known:
- The typical model is "retail-minus". The MVNO buys airtime, data and SMS at a discount to the network's own retail price. International rules of thumb put that discount at 20–40% for a "light" MVNO that relies on the host for everything but brand, billing and support. A "full" MVNO that runs its own core network can reach 35–50% gross margin, at much higher cost. These are industry benchmarks, not disclosed South African rates.
- Volume and quality buy the discount. MTN prices by guaranteed throughput, and every network pays better terms for committed volume.
- The regulator has not set a number. The Competition Commission's Data Services Market Inquiry (2019) asked for "a reasonable discount" on retail rates but set no percentage. ICASA's 2021 wholesale regulations were set aside by the High Court in September 2025. The 2026 Electronic Communications Amendment Bill would oblige the largest networks to offer MVNO access within 60 days and let ICASA regulate wholesale prices on a cost-plus basis, but it has not yet passed.
Why the networks agree: Cell C notes its MVNO revenue carries no distribution, marketing or customer-management cost. A bank that brings two million customers is a cheaper channel than a shop front.
What resellers earn
| Product | How the reseller is paid | Published figures |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile contracts (dealers, service providers) | Connection commission plus a share of ongoing revenue, set by the network's fee schedule | Not public. Dealer income was cut by up to 40% in MTN's 2015 cost drive. |
| Prepaid airtime and data (distributors, retail) | Discount on face value | Blue Label's group gross margin is about 10%; its data-solutions arm about 30%. Networks have been trimming distributor incentives. |
| Fibre (ISPs on Openserve, Vumatel, Frogfoot) | Buy the line wholesale, set their own retail price | Wholesale price lists are confidential; margins are thin, and both Vumatel and Openserve raised wholesale prices from April 2026. |
| Bulk SMS | Volume-tiered buy price | R0.29 per SMS at low volume down to R0.18 at 50,000+ (WinSMS list prices). |
| Cloud PBX | Recurring commission, or wholesale seats | Voys pays partners 10% (Silver) or 20% (Gold) of revenue, every month. |
| Microsoft 365 / Teams (CSP) | Discount on licences | Typically 12–18% on licences (international estimate), much more once managed services are added. |
| WhatsApp Business API | Platform fee; Meta's per-message fee passed through | Markups quoted from 0% (flat fee) to 5–40% — sources conflict. |
The types of reseller and partner programme
| Programme | What the partner does | Who bills the customer | Typical return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referral / agent | Introduces the customer, nothing more | The supplier | Once-off or recurring commission; lowest effort, lowest return |
| Reseller | Buys at wholesale, sells at retail, handles first-line support | The reseller | The spread between buy and sell price |
| White label | Sells the service under its own brand; supplier is invisible | The reseller | Highest margin per customer; reseller carries the brand and support |
| Distributor | Recruits and supplies other resellers | Sub-resellers | Small margin on large volume |
| Managed service provider | Bundles connectivity with IT support and management | The MSP | Earns mainly on the service, not the line |
| MVNO / MVNE | Runs a full mobile brand on a host network (or the platform others run on) | The MVNO | Retail-minus discount; needs scale to pay off |
Most suppliers layer tiers on top — MTN Business runs Foundation, Premier and Elite, Voys runs Silver and Gold, Microsoft moves partners from indirect to direct billing once they pass US$1m a year. Higher tiers mean better discounts in return for committed volume, certification and support obligations.
What this means if you run a business
- Use more than one channel. WhatsApp reaches most of your connected customers; SMS reaches all of them. Critical messages — OTPs, payment reminders, outage notices — belong on SMS, with WhatsApp as the richer follow-up.
- Price voice as a feature, not a product. Falling termination rates make calling cheaper every July. A cloud PBX with bundled minutes costs less than a legacy line and does far more.
- Watch WhatsApp costs. Service conversations are no longer unlimited from October 2026. Budget per conversation, and route high-volume one-way notices to SMS where it is cheaper.
- Pick the right programme. Referral is easy but small; reselling or white label pays more but means owning billing and support. Scale into higher tiers to earn the better discounts.
- If you resell, sell the layer on top. Margin lives in seats, platforms and support, not in the raw minute or message.
Telecloud supplies cloud PBX, voice, bulk SMS and business connectivity — directly and through resellers. If you would like to compare what your current channel mix costs against a bundled alternative, get in touch.