Broadband29.12.2014

South African broadband speeds: 2002 to 2014

By Staff Writer

On 1 December 2014 Telkom launched its long-awaited 100Mbps fibre-to-the-home service – the fastest fixed broadband offering from the company.

This followed the launch of commercial LTE Advanced products from Telkom, which offer speeds of up to 150Mbps.

With current broadband speeds of 100Mbps and higher it is easy to forget that 512kbps used to be the highest possible speed a decade ago.

To ensure we don’t take these new speeds for granted, let’s take a look back at some of South Africa’s fixed broadband highlights over the last twelve years.

August 2002 – Telkom launches 512kbps ADSL
April 2005 – Telkom launches 1Mbps ADSL
September 2006 – Telkom launches 4Mbps ADSL
August 2010 – Telkom launches 10Mbps ADSL
March 2013 – Telkom launches 20Mbps and 40Mbps VDSL
December 2014 – Telkom launches 100Mbps fibre-to-the-home

Here are some of the mobile broadband highlights over the last decade.

December 2004 – Vodacom launches 384kbps 3G
March 2006 – Vodacom launches 1.8Mbps HSDPA
January 2008 – Vodacom launches 3.6Mbps HSDPA
April 2009 – Vodacom launches 7.2Mbps HSPA
March 2010 – Vodacom launches 14.4Mbps HSPA
September 2010 – Cell C launches 21Mbps HSPA+
February 2011 – Vodacom launches 42Mbps HSPA+
October 2012 – Vodacom launches 100Mbps LTE
November 2014 – Telkom launches 150Mbps LTE Advanced

Other noteworthy broadband developments in South Africa include:

December 2004: iBurst launches 1Mbps iBurst Wireless service
May 2008: Neotel launches 2.4Mbps NeoConnect service
January 2009: Neotel launches 3.1Mbps NeoFlex service
July 2010: Neotel launches 8Mbps uncapped WiMax
August 2013: Smart Village launches 40Mbps fibre-to-the-home
October 2014: Vumatel launches 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home

The following graph shows how broadband speeds changed from 2002 to 2014. It should be noted that only residential services from large broadband providers are included.

Some of the excluded services include Vumatel’s 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home product in Parkhurst, and Neotel’s business fibre products.