For the third consecutive year, PwC in collaboration with DataEQ, has benchmarked consumer sentiment on social media towards South Africa’s major telco operators.

Having tracked over two million social media posts about Cell C, MTN, rain, Telkom and Vodacom from 1 January 2022 to December 2022, this year’s index saw the industry improve its average Net Sentiment by 17%. Despite this improvement, telecoms remained the country’s most disliked industry according to public sentiment on social media.

Themes covered in this year’s index include:

• Net Sentiment performance (overall, reputational and operational)
• Network, pricing and customer service performance
• Response rates
• Market conduct and risk
• Environmental, social and governance (ESG) influences