MTN South Africa IP Ranges
MTN South Africa is the domestic operating company of the pan-African MTN Group, and AS12091 is the retail ASN its fibre, mobile-data and business customers route through. AFRINIC holds the aut-num as MTNNS-1 under the organisation handle ORG-VSA1-AFRINIC, registered to MTN SA at an address in Fairland, Johannesburg, with route objects maintained under MTNSA-MNT and MTNBUSINESS-MNT. It is not MTN SA's only AFRINIC number: AS16637, registered as MTNNS-AS under that same organisation object, announces more address space and is AS12091's only recorded upstream. MTN Group itself, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, said in October 2025 that it had passed 300 million customers group-wide across its African markets, but that figure describes the whole group, not the South African subscriber base sitting behind this one ASN.
- Provider
- MTN South Africa
- Primary ASN
- AS12091
- Category
- ISP
- Headquarters
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Announced IPv4 prefixes
- 131
- Registry
- AFRINIC
Known IP ranges
These prefixes are currently announced to the global routing table by AS12091 (MTN SA - MTN SA). Prefix sets change over time - use WHOIS Lookup for the authoritative record on any specific address.
41.113.128.0/17
197.65.128.0/17
41.117.0.0/17
41.113.0.0/17
41.119.128.0/17
197.64.0.0/17
197.65.0.0/17
41.121.0.0/17
41.116.128.0/17
197.64.128.0/17
What does an MTN South Africa IP mean in a privacy test?
An address on AS12091 is a South African subscriber line, a Supersonic fibre or fixed-wireless connection, or MTN business space; it says nothing about MTN Group's other African operating companies, which register separate ASNs of their own.
What AFRINIC and RIPEstat hold for AS12091
MTN South Africa publishes no RFC 8805 geofeed and no public IP allowlist for this network, so what is independently checkable comes from AFRINIC's registry and RIPEstat's live routing view. AS12091 is registered at AFRINIC under the as-name MTNNS-1 and the organisation handle ORG-VSA1-AFRINIC, held by MTN SA at an address in Fairland, Johannesburg, with the aut-num created on 21 February 2005 and last changed 2 May 2025. Nearly every large block announced under it sits inside an AFRINIC inetnum named for the block itself, 197.64.0.0/17 as MTNSA-197-64-0-0-17 and 41.112.0.0/17 as MTNSA-41-112-0-0-17, each an ASSIGNED PA object maintained by MTNBUSINESS-MNT and carrying a remark that abuse be reported to abuse@mtnbusiness.co.za. MTNBUSINESS-MNT is a maintainer handle, the object permitted to edit those records, not a customer the space is assigned to, so it says nothing about whether the traffic inside a block is enterprise or consumer.
RIPEstat's announced-prefixes data puts AS12091 at 131 IPv4 prefixes and zero IPv6 for the fortnight ending 23 August 2026, a count that moves as the network changes and should be checked live rather than taken from this page. Twenty-two of those are /17s, the shortest prefix this ASN announces, among them 197.64.0.0/17, 197.65.128.0/17, 197.66.128.0/17, 41.115.0.0/17 and 41.116.0.0/17; most of the remainder are /19s. RIPEstat's two live views of this network do not perfectly agree: the announced-prefixes endpoint counts 131 IPv4 prefixes while the routing-consistency check, run against a slightly different window, evaluates 133 and finds a matching RADB route object for only 47 of them, with the remaining majority visible in BGP but absent from any IRR database. A route filter or prefix list built from IRR data alone would therefore miss most of what this ASN actually announces. RIPEstat's neighbour data lists exactly one upstream for AS12091, AS16637, and no downstream autonomous systems at all, so nothing behind this ASN runs BGP of its own - a statement about routing rather than about resale, since address space can still be handed to customers and resellers that never speak BGP.
MTN's own traffic on AS12091 versus its neighbour AS16637
AS12091 is a South African eyeball network: RIPEstat's routing view shows no downstream autonomous systems of its own, and a reverse-DNS sample turns up more than one MTN retail brand living on it. Addresses inside 105.209.64.0/19 answer in the form 105-209-64-1.access.supersonic.co.za, the domain of Supersonic, the fibre, 5G and AirFibre fixed-wireless ISP MTN launched in 2018 and owns outright. Most of the rest of the network, including 197.64.0.0/17 and 41.112.0.0/17, returns no PTR record at all on direct query, so an address here is either a named MTN retail brand or an unnamed subscriber line, and a missing reverse name is not itself evidence of anything on this network.
The AFRINIC record also ties AS12091 to a second number, AS16637, registered as MTNNS-AS under the same organisation object, ORG-VSA1-AFRINIC, and carrying more announced space of its own: 209 IPv4 prefixes and 3 IPv6 prefixes against AS12091's 131 and none. RIPEstat names AS16637 as AS12091's only recorded upstream, so an address that resolves to AS16637 rather than AS12091 sits on MTN's other network rather than on this retail one; this page describes AS12091 only and does not characterise what AS16637 itself carries. What AFRINIC publishes about location is finer than a country but coarser than a lookup tool's answer: each large inetnum carries a description naming the region the block was provisioned for, so 197.64.0.0/17 reads Mobile Broadband Internet Randburg, 41.116.0.0/17 reads Berea (Durban), 41.117.0.0/17 reads Tygerberg (Cape Town) and 41.123.0.0/17 reads Pretoria. That label describes a whole /17 as registered, not the address being looked up, and on mobile-broadband space a subscriber need not be anywhere near it, so a city a geolocation tool reports is still that tool's own estimate.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
What is AS12091?
AS12091 is the autonomous system MTN South Africa uses for its retail internet business: home broadband, mobile data and the Supersonic fibre and 5G brand. AFRINIC registers it under the as-name MTNNS-1 to the organisation MTN SA, with the aut-num first created on 21 February 2005.
How large is MTN South Africa's AS12091 network?
RIPEstat's live routing data put AS12091 at 131 announced IPv4 prefixes and no announced IPv6 space for the fortnight ending 23 August 2026. That count moves as the network changes, so check RIPEstat's own announced-prefixes page for AS12091 for the current figure rather than treating this one as fixed.
Is AS12091 the same network as AS16637?
No, though both are registered to MTN SA under the same AFRINIC organisation handle, ORG-VSA1-AFRINIC. AS12091 (MTNNS-1) is the retail network, with no downstream autonomous systems of its own. AS16637 (MTNNS-AS) announces more address space, 209 IPv4 prefixes and 3 IPv6 prefixes against AS12091's 131 and none, and RIPEstat names it as AS12091's only recorded upstream, so it sits on a different side of MTN's network rather than carrying the same retail traffic.
How do I check whether an IP address belongs to MTN South Africa's network?
Run a WHOIS or RDAP lookup against the address. AFRINIC returns the organisation MTN SA under handle ORG-VSA1-AFRINIC on the parent allocation, and for most large blocks an inetnum named for the block itself, such as MTNSA-197-64-0-0-17, maintained by MTNBUSINESS-MNT with a remark routing abuse to abuse@mtnbusiness.co.za. Reverse DNS only helps for part of the range: addresses inside 105.209.64.0/19 answer under access.supersonic.co.za, but most of the rest of AS12091's space returns no PTR record at all.
What does an IP address on AS12091 NOT prove?
It does not tell you which MTN product sits behind the address, since fixed, mobile-data and Supersonic customers share the same maintainer and abuse contact. It does not pin the connection to a town: AFRINIC's descriptions do name a region per block, such as Randburg, Berea (Durban) or Tygerberg (Cape Town), but that label covers a whole /17 as registered and a mobile subscriber need not be near it. And it says nothing about MTN Group's other African operating companies, which run on entirely separate ASNs of their own.