Fibre vs 5G vs LTE — Uncapped Internet from R247 in South Africa

South African households can get an affordable uncapped Internet service for as little as R247 per month, a MyBroadband comparison of fixed broadband products reveals.

There is a range of fibre, fixed-LTE, fixed-5G, and fixed-wireless products available for less than R500 a month.

Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) is the optimal type of broadband connectivity for the highest speeds and lowest latency, but it is primarily limited to cities and bigger towns.

If you don’t have FTTH coverage at your home address, the next best option would be uncapped fixed-5G, available from Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, and Rain.

However, only MTN offers this type of connectivity for less than R500.

Fixed-LTE is the most likely to be available in your area unless you live in a remote part of the country.

These packages are generally more affordable than fibre on a per-Mbps-of-speed basis.

However, the cheaper options come with fair usage policies (FUPs) that limit their speeds once a certain amount of data is used.

Lesser-known fibre operator comes out on top

MyBroadband recently compared the prices of entry-level fixed broadband packages to see what could be bought for R500 or less per month.

To our surprise, the most affordable uncapped option was an FTTH package on Zoom Fibre’s network via Afrihost.

For R247 per month, customers get a symmetric 15Mbps FTTH connection, which would easily suit a single person or couple with less demanding Internet requirements.

For bigger households, there is also a 30Mbps Zoom Fibre package on Afrihost for R200 more per month.

Unfortunately, Zoom Fibre is not among the country’s top five biggest fibre network operators (FNOs), so the likelihood of having access to its network is quite low.

For those without access to Zoom’s FTTH connectivity, Axxess offers the cheapest uncapped fixed-LTE package and will get you speeds of up to 20Mbps.

However, it comes with a stringent FUP of 50GB, after which your speeds will be throttled down to 2Mbps.

This is quite limiting. Even some heavy single users might consume that 50GB quickly, particularly if they like playing newer games that often require downloading large files.

A solid fixed-LTE option for a small household would be the MyMTN Home Uncapped Internet Pro package for R399 per month.

It throttles speeds to 5Mbps after 300GB of usage — plenty of data for video streaming and browsing.

The only fixed-5G package that will cost you less than R500 per month is a MyMTN Home Uncapped 35Mbps package.

Another option to consider if you don’t like FUPs but don’t have fibre is Supersonic’s fixed-wireless Air Fibre products.

These are a bit more expensive than fixed-LTE options but won’t have you worrying about consuming too much data to use your maximum possible speed.

The table below summarises the most affordable fixed broadband packages available to homes in South Africa.

This excludes highly specialised offerings like Vuma Key, Openserve Web Connect, and Frogfoot Air, which are limited to lower-income areas.