Best ISP in South Africa revealed

MyBroadband has released its Q4 2020 broadband and ISP report, which shows that Cool Ideas, MTN, and Afrihost are the best Internet service providers (ISPs) in South Africa.

The report is based on 73,058 customer satisfaction ratings from South African broadband users between 1 October and 31 December 2020.

These customer satisfaction ratings are collected through MyBroadband’s web-based, Android, and iOS speed test apps.

After a user performs a speed test on these platforms, they are asked to rate their ISP based on their overall satisfaction with the service.

These customer satisfaction ratings are then processed to produce a score out of 10 for each ISP. The higher the score, the better the service provider.

Cool Ideas continued its strong performance in 2020 and topped the rankings with an average score of 8.09.

MTN, which has launched aggressively priced fixed-LTE products in Q4 2020, ranked second with a score of 7.93.

Afrihost also continued its upward trend with an average customer satisfaction score of 7.85, which placed it third.

Rain’s challenges continued in the last quarter of 2020 and it once again finished last with a score of 5.42.

Rain’s poor performance was caused by the rapid growth in subscribers, its shareholder African Rainbow Capital Investments (ARC) said.

“Rain has experienced certain customer service challenges following the strong growth in enrolling new customers,” ARC said.

ARC said this strong growth was a result of significantly more people than expected engaged in online and digital activity during the lockdown period.

“Significant progress has been made to improve customer service levels,” ARC said.

South African ISP rankings

The tables below provide an overview of the Q4 2020 ISP rankings for prominent service providers.

The first table shows the ratings for large ISPs – service providers which received a large number of votes during the quarter.

Many prominent ISPs did not receive enough votes to be included in the first table because the margin of error is too large for an accurate conclusion.

Their average scores, however, remain of interest and are shown in the second table. It should be noted that this information should not be compared to the first table and cannot be used for any brand claims.

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