South Africa's preferred fibre network providers - January 2024

Jan

Jan

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Vumatel beats Openserve in close fibre race

Vumatel is the preferred fibre network provider in South Africa, beating its main rival, Openserve, by only 1%. Vodacom, Frogfoot, and Metrofibre completed the top 5.

In 2022, Openserve enjoyed a 4% lead over Vumatel. This lead shrunk to 1% in 2023, and Vumatel has now taken the top spot in a tight race. It shows that Vumatel is doing a better job than Openserve in promoting its brand.
 
Most of these providers have monopolies in towns.
Frogfoot fiber is hated by all in the Gardenroute but there's no secondary provider for most of the areas.
Their network stability is atrocious and you can basically guarantee outages every single week.
 
I had to use OS at a new property and initially dreaded it - but I was pleasantly surprised. Great service, great comms, installed quickly and with no mess.
Vumatel on the other hand has just become worse and worse over time.
 
Given that Vumatel has passed more home by some margin, yet only has 1% better score, shows how much weaker it's value proposition is.
 
I doubt this is accurately done. Most people will choose Vuma because it's more widely known and available but after consultation with ISPs or using both most people I know of go with OS first and Vumatel last. Vuma has really done a bad job for itself where slightly more people have access to fibre but more people wish they could go with another provider. Most people also don't know that OS is Telkom.
 
Much like Telkom back in the day, I don't really have a choice, stuck with Vumatel, if I did have a choice it wouldn't be them.
 
mpdjhb said:
I had to use OS at a new property and initially dreaded it - but I was pleasantly surprised. Great service, great comms, installed quickly and with no mess.
Vumatel on the other hand has just become worse and worse over time.
Click to expand...
Vumatel, regular outages, little to no comms, blames the ISP though many in the area with different ISPs report issues.
 
"preferred" is a bit inaccurate considering most don't have a choice. There are limited (probably literal) edge cases where small areas overlap but in most instances you have a single provider available to you, if at all.
 
1 week outage and counting with vuma/DFA. wish I had an option of OS.
 
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