Fibre price war in South Africa after wholesale changes
A fibre price war has started in South Africa after Openserve announced major changes to its wholesale offering.
Openserve is South Africa’s biggest fixed broadband provider and covers over 2.4 million households with fibre – either directly to the home (FTTH) or the cabinet (FTTC).
The network provider also has plans to provide fibre-to-the-home to its entire FTTC footprint, which is great news for current DSL subscribers.
As part of its fibre drive, Openserve implemented speed upgrades and price cuts on its Fibre Connect and Copper Connect products today.
The most significant change is its phasing out of 10Mbps and 20Mbps services, which were upgraded to 25Mbps and 50Mbps speeds for free.
“As part of the speed upgrade, there will be no additional costs from Openserve impacting ISP partners directly,” Openserve said.
Openserve added that it is offering incentives to its ISP partners to enable them to easily upgrade their customers.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including Afrihost, Cool Ideas, Axxess, Supersonic, and Mweb, were quick to respond to Openserve’s wholesale changes.
On 9 February Afrihost informed its fibre clients who use Openserve infrastructure that they will receive free line speed upgrades in March.
Axxess followed suit on 17 February, saying almost all of its Openserve Fibre customers will be getting their line speeds upgraded for free.
These speed upgrades will result in customers’ speeds being doubled at no extra cost, and the upgrades will be permanent.
Last week, Mweb launched its new Openserve fibre products, which include a symmetrical 25Mbps service for R499 per month.
Openserve fibre prices in South Africa
MyBroadband compared the newly launched Openserve ISP products from prominent ISPs in the table below.
It should be noted that some popular service providers, like Vox, are not included as their new Openserve prices have not been announced yet.
| Openserve Fibre Prices in South Africa | |||
| ISP | Download Speed | Upload Speed | Price |
| Mweb | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R499 |
| Afrihost | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R597 |
| Cool Ideas | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R599 |
| Axxess | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R645 |
| Supersonic | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R699 |
| Mweb | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R739 |
| Afrihost | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R797 |
| Axxess | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R805 |
| Cool Ideas | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R819 |
| Supersonic | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R849 |
| Mweb | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R899 |
| Afrihost | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R917 |
| Axxess | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R935 |
| Cool Ideas | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R999 |
| Supersonic | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R1,049 |
| Mweb | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,049 |
| Afrihost | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,117 |
| Axxess | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,135 |
| Supersonic | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,195 |
| Cool Ideas | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,199 |
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