Theft, vandalism and electricity outages continue to weigh on South Africa’s telecommunications sector, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa’s) latest ‘State of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Sector Report of South Africa’ shows.

It highlights a major shift between 2024 and 2025, revealing changing security challenges in the sector, with theft increasing significantly while vandalism has declined.

Theft-related costs increased 189% from R69.59-million in 2024 to R201.48-million in 2025, which the report says may reflect increased cable theft, equipment resale markets or weaknesses in infrastructure protection.

Vandalism, however, declined 34% from R213.83-million to R140.93-million, possibly owing to improved surveillance, community awareness programmes or faster response times.

While progress appears to have been made against vandalism, the rapid growth in theft underscores the need for stronger asset protection strategies.

The report also reveals sustained spending on batteries and generators in 2025, indicating elevated resilience costs owing to power disruptions.

Battery costs doubled from R173.8-million in 2024 to R387.7-million in 2025, an increase of about R214-million.

The number of batteries purchased also increased – from 44 708 in 2024 to 84 829 in 2025 – showing stronger demand or renewed replacement programmes.

Similarly, generator spending increased from R211.5-million to R426.8-million, up by about R215-million, while the number of generators bought more than doubled from 855 in 2024 to 1 969 in 2025.

Both batteries and generators experienced parallel growth in cost and volume, suggesting expanded budgets, renewed infrastructure investment or efforts to strengthen backup power capacity, following the reduced procurement levels of the previous year, the report notes.

Meanwhile, total telecommunications investment in 2025 decreased by 2.3%.

Spending on mobile communication services decreased by 21%, while investment in fixed, wired broadband services increased by 11.9%, reflecting a pivot towards fixed networks and indicating a strategic shift towards strengthening long-term infrastructure and expanding reliable high-speed connectivity rather than prioritising mobile network expansion.

The report further notes that the national population network coverage shows overall improvement from 2024 to 2025.

On a national average, 3G coverage increased slightly from 99.79% to 99.85%, while 4G/LTE coverage increased from 99.1% to 99.5%, showing expanding high-speed access.

Mobile broadband coverage also grew from 99.8% to 99.9%. However, geographical broadband coverage remained at 82.1%, suggesting limited new area expansion.