Affordable uncapped Internet for everyone in South Africa

Affordable uncapped broadband has become pervasive in South Africa, with households able to get a good service at a reasonable price on fibre, 5G, fixed-wireless alternatives, or over a satellite.

Whether in a high-rise apartment block or deep in rural South Africa, there is usually at least one solid option for an affordable, uncapped broadband service people can use.

Less than ten years ago, this was not the case.

The privilege of affordable uncapped broadband was the purview of those select few who lived within the minimum range of a Telkom ADSL-enabled exchange.

Or, for the very lucky, those who had access to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).

Telkom’s ADSL user base peaked in March 2016, when the company reported that it had just over a million subscribers using the technology.

One of the cheapest uncapped ADSL packages on the market at the time — a 2Mbps service from Axxess — cost R428 per month, including Telkom’s compulsory phone line rental fee of R189.

Prices escalated rapidly for faster connections, with a 10Mbps uncapped DSL service costing around R910 per month.

Around the same time, upstart fibre operators were rolling out infrastructure in affluent neighbourhoods in direct competition with Telkom.

South Africa’s fibre revolution began in 2014 when a then-unknown company, Vumatel, won a bid to roll out FTTH in Parkhurst, an affluent Johannesburg suburb.

While several small fibre operators were already well-established and providing services to residential estates and businesses, Vumatel and Parkhurst kicked off a veritable gold rush.

Parkhurst’s approach spawned a series of copycat invitations to bid from affluent suburbs all over South Africa, and soon, a fibre land grab was in full swing.

When Vumatel’s network launched in Parkhurst in 2014, an uncapped 100Mbps FTTH connection was R6,500 per month.

Just two years later, the price had plummeted to around R1,000.

While Telkom was still charging R4,000 per month for uncapped 100Mbps in 2016 to try and protect its DSL business, it soon realised it had to cut prices for its Openserve division to be competitive.

In addition to increased competition, prices dropped so quickly because of the success of Teraco’s free and open peering initiative at its NAPAfrica Internet exchange point.

NAPAfrica convinced several major online content providers, including Netflix, Google, and Facebook, to peer freely in South Africa.

As a result, the cost of bandwidth to Internet service providers became nearly zero.

Vumatel groundbreaking in Parkhurst in 2014

Fast forward to 2024, and South Africa’s largest fibre network operators cover roughly 5 million homes between them.

Of these, around two million took up a service and have a fibre network point in the house.

Fibre network operators have also expanded beyond the big cities and middle- to high-income households since 2016.

Several residential areas in small towns now have access to fibre, and operators have rolled out infrastructure to townships — densely populated, low-income urban areas.

Yet fibre is not the only option for affordable uncapped broadband in South Africa, as the difference between the homes passed and homes connected figures above indicate.

Cellular network operators have launched uncapped fixed-LTE and fixed–5G services that offer excellent speeds for between R299 and R999 per month.

Telkom, MTN, and Rain all offer uncapped LTE and 5G products.

Rain is focussing on uncapped 5G with its RainOne service and no longer sells uncapped LTE. However, existing uncapped LTE subscribers can continue to use the service.

Vodacom recently relaunched uncapped services through Internet service provider Axxess after adding extremely large caps to all its uncapped products in 2022.

The major difference between fibre and these services is that uncapped LTE and 5G generally have fair usage policies (FUPs) that throttle speeds after consuming a certain amount of data.

This is because radio frequency spectrum is extremely limited compared to the visible light spectrum used by fibre, and unrestrained usage typically leads to congestion on wireless networks.

RainOne products currently stand out among their peers because they do not have set FUP thresholds.

Technicians working on a Rain tower

For households without access to fibre, LTE, or 5G, alternative fixed wireless access (FWA) services and satellite broadband are available.

Examples of FWA alternatives include Supersonic’s Air Fibre and wireless Internet service providers (Wisps).

Air Fibre has no FUP thresholds, and many Wisps also offer services without a FUP. However, they are generally much slower than fibre, LTE, and 5G.

Businesses and households in rural areas without access to fibre, LTE, 5G, or a FWA alternative have the option of uncapped satellite broadband connectivity.

Vox sells a 5Mbps satellite Internet package with 2Mbps upload for R761 per month with no setup cost.

It also sells 10Mbps, 20Mbps, 30Mbps, and 50Mbps connections for R1,082, R1,493, R2,200, and R3,025, respectively.

MorClick charges R2,500 for installation, and customers can get a 10Mbps or 20Mbps uncapped package for R999 or R1,299 per month, respectively.

Starlink is a game changer in this regard with its low-Earth orbit satellite network, however the service is not legally available in South Africa.

While it is possible to get Starlink working in South Africa, it requires importing a kit from a supported country and paying an additional roaming fee.

Starlink recently announced that it was hiking its roaming fees, making it significantly more expensive.

Yet, it is still much cheaper than uncapped 40Mbps DSL or 100Mbps fibre in 2016.

The proliferation of fibre, LTE, 5G, Wisps, and satellite services have brought affordable uncapped broadband within reach of many more South Africans than just eight years ago.

Although there is always more that can be done, it’s useful to look back every once in awhile and appreciate how much things have improved in South Africa’s broadband landscape.

Our telecommunications sector has done a phenomenal job ensuring that South Africa’s networks are truly world class, even in occasionally outright hostile environment.