Openserve destroyed in South Africa’s 2023 fibre price war
Recent changes in South African fibre network operator (FNO) speeds and pricing have made Openserve the most expensive home fibre provider for nearly all line speed categories.
This represents a radical shift from the past two years.
Openserve’s speed upgrades and price cuts in 2021 made it the cheapest provider and set the tone for a sequence of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) package overhauls from its rivals in the following months.
It continued to compete well on price for a long time, particularly with its affordable entry-level 25Mbps package.
But with the most recent adjustments, Openserve has fallen behind other major FNOs like Vumatel, Frogfoot, MetroFibre, and Octotel across most package tiers.
MetroFibre recently radically reduced prices on its 500Mbps and 1Gbps packages and scrapped the 200Mbps package, replacing it with a 400Mbps one at no extra charge.
On the downside, it increased the wholesale price of its 50Mbps and is expected to bump up the cost of its 100Mbps later this year.
However, further price changes are on the cards at Metrofibre, alongside other revamps due to be announced in March 2023.
Frogfoot and Octotel also increased speeds on most of their FTTH products. Although this triggered some price increases, there were also improvements in the price-per-megabit of packages.
Openserve’s speed increases were relatively conservative compared to its competitors.
Price per Mbps comparison
We compared the latest available prices from these FNOs on one of the country’s biggest fibre ISPs — Afrihost.
With the latest package restructuring, it has become more difficult to directly compare the prices of packages between FNOs.
Each FNO offers a different combination of package speeds, and some have opted for some rather peculiar configurations rather than the conventional 50Mbps, 100Mbps, 200Mbps, and 500Mbps options.
For example, while Frogfoot still sells 500Mbps and 1Gbps packages — it now offers 75Mbps, 150Mbps, and 250Mbps line speeds.
Similarly, Openserve sells packages with download speeds of 150Mbps and 300Mbps, which aren’t typical speed configurations either.
For this reason, we calculated the price per megabit per second within speed categories for a more useful comparison.
On that basis, Openserve was the most expensive option in six of the seven segments where it had competition.
The cheapest options for each category varied between the remaining FNOs.
The tables below compare the prices of Afrihost’s symmetric and asymmetric FTTH packages on the networks of Frogfoot, MetroFibre, Octotel, Openserve, and Vumatel.
The most cost effective packages are marked in green, and the lest cost effective in red.
Afrihost FTTH prices — symmetric | ||||
Fibre network operator | Download speed | Upload speed | Price | Price per Mbps |
40–50Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 40 Mbps | 40 Mbps | R627 | R15.68 |
MetroFibre | 50 Mbps | 50 Mbps | R797 | R15.94 |
Octotel | 50 Mbps | 50 Mbps | R727 | R14.54 |
Openserve | 40 Mbps | 40 Mbps | R647 | R16.18 |
Vumatel | 50 Mbps | 50 Mbps | R727 | R14.54 |
75Mbps–100Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 80 Mbps | 80 Mbps | R827 | R10.34 |
MetroFibre | 100 Mbps | 100 Mbps | R897 | R8.97 |
Octotel | 100 Mbps | 100 Mbps | R827 | R8.27 |
Openserve | 75 Mbps | 75 Mbps | R877 | R11.69 |
Vumatel | 100 Mbps | 100 Mbps | R927 | R9.27 |
150Mbps–200Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 150 Mbps | 150 Mbps | R927 | R6.18 |
Octotel | 200 Mbps | 200 Mbps | R997 | R4.99 |
Openserve | 150 Mbps | 150 Mbps | R1,047 | R6.98 |
Vumatel | 200 Mbps | 200 Mbps | R1,047 | R5.24 |
250Mbps–400Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 250 Mbps | 250 Mbps | R1,047 | R4.19 |
MetroFibre | 400 Mbps | 400 Mbps | R997 | R2.49 |
500Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 500 Mbps | 500 Mbps | R1,347 | R2.69 |
MetroFibre | 500 Mbps | 500 Mbps | R1,197 | R2.39 |
1Gbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 1,000 Mbps | 1,000 Mbps | R1,547 | R1.55 |
Afrihost fibre-to-the-home prices — asymmetric | ||||
Fibre network operator | Download speed | Upload speed | Price | Price per Mbps |
40–50Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 40 Mbps | 10 Mbps | R527 | R13.18 |
Openserve | 40 Mbps | 20 Mbps | R547 | R13.68 |
75Mbps–100Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 80 Mbps | 20 Mbps | R727 | R9.09 |
Openserve | 75 Mbps | 50 Mbps | R747 | R9.96 |
150Mbps–200Mbps | ||||
Frogfoot | 150 Mbps | 30 Mbps | R827 | R5.51 |
Openserve | 150 Mbps | 75 Mbps | R997 | R6.65 |
250Mbps–400Mbps | ||||
Openserve | 300 Mbps | 150 Mbps | R1,217 | R4.06 |
400Mbps–500Mbps | ||||
Octotel | 400 Mbps | 200 Mbps | R1,197 | R2.99 |
Openserve | 500 Mbps | 250 Mbps | R1,397 | R2.79 |
Vumatel | 500 Mbps | 200 Mbps | R1,197 | R2.39 |
1Gbps | ||||
MetroFibre | 1,000 Mbps | 250 Mbps | R1,297 | R1.30 |
Octotel | 1,000 Mbps | 100 Mbps | R1,447 | R1.45 |
Vumatel | 1,000 Mbps | 250 Mbps | R1,497 | R1.50 |