South African fibre price war – Uncapped fibre-to-the-home for under R400

South Africans can now buy a fast, uncapped fibre-to-the-home service for under R400 per month thanks to speed increases and price cuts from network operators.
The fibre price war in South Africa was started by Openserve when they increased the speeds of their wholesale offerings for free on 1 March 2021.
Openserve upgraded the speed of its 10Mbps, 20Mbps, 50Mbps, and 100Mbps products to 25Mbps, 50Mbps, 100Mbps, and 200Mbps respectively.
The network operator also reduced the price of its 200Mbps product to the previous 100Mbps price.
Openserve said as part of the speed upgrade, there will be no additional costs impacting ISP partners directly.
“We are offering our ISP partners incentives to enable them to easily upgrade their customers,” Openserve said.
Frogfoot followed suit by increasing the speeds of its 10Mbps, 20Mbps, and 50Mbps products to 30Mbps, 50Mbps, and 100Mbps respectively.
Frogfoot’s head of sales and marketing, Shane Chorley, said these changes give Frogfoot subscribers higher speeds at the same price.
These changes also saw the entry-level speed on Frogfoot’s network increase from 10Mbps to 30Mbps.
The next network operator to announce higher speeds and price cuts on its fibre products was Herotel.
The company is improving the value proposition on its 10Mbps, 50Mbps, 100Mbps, and 200Mbps packages.
It has also added new 75Mbps and 1Gbps services to its fibre-to-the-home product range.
Herotel’s entry-level 10Mbps service now sells for R399 per month while its symmetrical 50Mbps product sells for R499 per month.
Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha told MyBroadband the new pricing and products are made possible by their aerial fibre network.
Instead of trenching, which is the typical way to deploy fibre to homes, it is building an aerial fibre network.
Botha said this approach allows them to deploy fibre faster and with less disruption to municipal infrastructure and private property.
The latest provider to announce improvements to its fibre offering is MetroFibre, which will increase the speeds of its fibre-to-the-home products from 1 June 2021.
The company has also introduced a new 300Mbps product which will replace its previous top-end 200Mbps service.
As part of the changes, MetroFibre will discontinue its entry-level 10Mbps service and replace it with a 25Mbps product.
The wholesale changes from Openserve and Frogfoot quickly filtered down to consumers in the form of higher speeds and lower prices.
Afrihost was the first to react to the price changes by increasing the speed of its Openserve fibre subscribers for free.
Afrihost CEO Gian Visser said the bill for their 200Mbps fibre clients was also automatically reduced by R380 per month from 1 March.
The ISP has further slashed the price of its Frogfoot fibre products with uncapped packages starting at under R500 per month.
Existing clients will automatically be upgraded to the new speed in a phased approach during the month of May 2021.
Afrihost added that new subscribers can save up to R5,000 on setup costs with free activation and a free Wi-Fi router thrown in.
Other ISPs, including Telkom, Webafrica, and Mweb, followed suit with entry-level uncapped fibre prices dropping to below R400 per month.
Telkom, for example, is currently running a promotion offering a 25/5Mbps uncapped fibre service for R399 per month.
Webafrica, in turn, is offering a 25/10Mbps service over Openserve’s network for R399 per month for the rest of the year. This is down from the usual R599 per month.
This is the first time South Africans can subscribe to an uncapped 25Mbps fibre service for below R400 per month.
The table below provides an overview of the latest fibre-to-the-home promotions and price cuts from prominent ISPs.
Fibre Prices in South Africa | ||||
ISP | Fibre Provider | Download Speed | Upload Speed | Price |
Herotel | Herotel | 10Mbps | 10Mbps | R399 |
Webafrica | Metrofibre | 10Mbps | 10Mbps | R499 |
Webafrica | Openserve | 25Mbps | 10Mbps | R399 |
Telkom | Openserve | 25Mbps | 5Mbps | R399 |
Telkom | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R449 |
Mweb | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R499 |
Home Connect | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R588 |
RSAWEB | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R595 |
Afrihost | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R597 |
Cool Ideas | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R599 |
Axxess | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R645 |
Supersonic | Openserve | 25Mbps | 25Mbps | R699 |
Webafrica | Frogfoot | 30Mbps | 2Mbps | R399 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 30Mbps | 3Mbps | R497 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 30Mbps | 30Mbps | R597 |
Herotel | Herotel | 50Mbps | 50Mbps | R499 |
Webafrica | Frogfoot | 50Mbps | 4Mbps | R609 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 50Mbps | 5Mbps | R697 |
Telkom | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R699 |
Webafrica | Openserve | 50Mbps | 10Mbps | R699 |
Mweb | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R739 |
Home Connect | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R788 |
RSAWEB | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R795 |
Afrihost | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R797 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 50Mbps | 50Mbps | R797 |
Axxess | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R805 |
Cool Ideas | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R819 |
Supersonic | Openserve | 50Mbps | 25Mbps | R849 |
Webafrica | Frogfoot | 100Mbps | 5Mbps | R749 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 100Mbps | 10Mbps | R797 |
Webafrica | Openserve | 100Mbps | 20Mbps | R799 |
Herotel | Herotel | 100Mbps | 100Mbps | R849 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 100Mbps | 100Mbps | R897 |
Telkom | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R899 |
Mweb | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R899 |
Afrihost | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R917 |
Home Connect | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R928 |
Axxess | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R935 |
RSAWEB | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R995 |
Cool Ideas | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R999 |
Supersonic | Openserve | 100Mbps | 50Mbps | R1,049 |
Webafrica | Frogfoot | 200Mbps | 15Mbps | R849 |
Webafrica | Openserve | 200Mbps | 40Mbps | R899 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 200Mbps | 200Mbps | R997 |
Herotel | Herotel | 200Mbps | 200Mbps | R999 |
Mweb | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,049 |
Afrihost | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,117 |
Home Connect | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,128 |
Axxess | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,135 |
Telkom | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,169 |
Supersonic | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,195 |
Cool Ideas | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,199 |
RSAWEB | Openserve | 200Mbps | 100Mbps | R1,295 |
Webafrica | Frogfoot | 500Mbps | 50Mbps | R949 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 500Mbps | 500Mbps | R1,297 |
RSAWEB | Vumatel | 1Gbps | 100Mbps | R1,495 |
Axxess | Vumatel | 1Gbps | 100Mbps | R1,495 |
Afrihost | Vumatel | 1Gbps | 100Mbps | R1,497 |
Afrihost | Frogfoot | 1Gbps | 1Gbps | R1,497 |
Herotel | Herotel | 1Gbps | 1Gbps | R1,499 |
Mweb | Vumatel | 1Gbps | 100Mbps | R1,499 |