Warning to fibre networks increasing prices in South Africa

South Africans have become increasingly agitated with annual price increases on fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) packages in recent years.

The frustration has reached a point where many of MyBroadband’s readers have expressed interest in inferior broadband technologies — even if that meant they would have to switch to a capped package.

There has been a rapid expansion of FTTH across millions of households in South Africa over the last decade.

A healthy open-access market has developed with multiple fibre network operators (FNOs) providing infrastructure and dozens of Internet service providers (ISPs) selling a wide range of products at varying prices.

The home broadband industry is much healthier than in the Telkom-monopolised DSL era of the 2000s and early 2010s, where slow speeds and poor customer service were the order of the day.

For most households, FTTH still offers the best value for money among broadband Internet options due to its bandwidth, low latency, and overall reliability.

FNOs also won plenty of favour among customers with free speed increases on packages during the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, in the last three years, many of the country’s FNOs have increased wholesale prices without any speed upgrades.

This came after a period of forced upgrades, where customers saw their speeds increased while prices remained roughly the same.

Many customers said they would have preferred to keep their previous, slower speeds and receive a price decrease.

The Competition Commission’s inaugural Cost of Living report, published in September 2025, highlighted a concerning trend in fibre prices in recent years.

It found that fibre broadband prices were increasing faster relative to inflation than mobile and fixed wireless Internet services.

While wireless Internet prices increased by only 1% between January 2022 and early 2025, fibre prices had surged by 14%.

In the last two years in particular, MyBroadband has seen complaints from many fibre users considering cancelling their packages and moving to more affordable fixed-LTE or fixed-5G plans.

Many said they would be willing to live with stricter fair usage policies (FUPs) and lower speeds to save money.

Some users are even considering satellite Internet

Following the recent FTTH increases announced by Vumatel and Openserve, MyBroadband was surprised that many readers even floated the idea of moving to Starlink once it becomes available locally.

Starlink is not intended to compete with high-capacity fixed services in urbanised areas; it is primarily aimed at rural Internet users with limited or no other broadband options.

In those environments, it has often proved it can offer much higher speeds, connection reliability, and lower latency than competing products like geosynchronous satellite, at much lower prices.

However, it would not be completely unprecedented for Starlink to win a few fibre customers in cities. However, this has usually occurred in areas with little meaningful FTTH price competition.

Starlink was forced to pause new orders for nearly two years in several sub-Saharan African cities due to unprecedented demand.

Some of these cities — like Harare in Zimbabwe — already had high-speed uncapped residential fibre Internet. However, these packages were much more expensive than similar services in South Africa.

Starlink launched in Zimbabwe with subscriptions starting at $30 (R492) per month for a connection offering download speeds over 100Mbps.

The development forced several local Internet service providers to lower their prices or risk an exodus of customers.

South Africa has a much more advanced and competitive fibre industry than Zimbabwe, so an immediate surge in urban uptake is unlikely.

However, FNOs should not underestimate the fact that Starlink’s prices in the region are highly competitive with entry-level uncapped fibre, fixed-LTE, and fixed-5G packages.

If Starlink offered packages with pricing similar to what it charges in some of South Africa’s neighbours, it could become a viable alternative to FTTH, especially for those primarily seeking high speeds.

Starlink performance and prices in neighbouring countries

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