South Africa’s biggest fibre networks

South Africa has around 1.5 million households with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity, thanks to a plethora of fibre network operators (FNOs) rolling out infrastructure across the country.

Six of these FNOs have over 100,000 customers connected to their networks, two of which have nearly half a million each.

The battle for the biggest FNO has intensified in the past few years, with CIVH’s Vumatel and Telkom’s Openserve vying for the top spot.

According to the latest available data, Vumatel boasts the largest network by homes passed — at 1.6 million.

Its closest competitor — Openserve — recently announced it breached the milestone of 1 million homes passed in the last quarter of 2022.

Telkom’s Q4 2022 financial results also showed it had the highest number of homes connected of any fibre network — 469,556 — compared to Vumatel’s most recent figure of 450,000.

Importantly, however, Vumatel last provided an update on the homes connected to its network in July 2022, at which point Openserve had 414,847.

While it is possible that it lost customers between then and December 2022, it is more likely to have gained subscribers based on how its customer base has grown in the years gone by.

It is also set to merge its network with Vodacom’s as part of a deal between the country’s biggest mobile operator and Vumatel parent CIVH.

If approved by the Competition Commission, Vodacom’s 155,760 home and business fibre customers will be added to Vumatel’s under a new company called Maziv.

Openserve still has a significant lead when it comes to its long-distance and metropolitan networks.

Research from Analytico in 2022 also found that Openserve had a stronger brand and was the preferred operator of South African broadband subscribers.

The battle for the third and fourth biggest operator has also become tight — with Metrofibre leaping past Frogfoot in homes passed during 2022.

By the end of the year, over 440,000 homes have access to Metrofibre FTTH, compared to the 350,000 that could sign up for a Frogfoot fibre line.

Frogfoot still leads Metrofibre in homes connected to its network, with approximately 135,000 customers compared to 126,000 for Metrofibre.

Metrofibre also recently shook up the market with highly-competitive pricing across all its packages.

In particular, Metrofibre’s high-speed 500Mbps and 1Gbps products are substantially cheaper than its rivals.

However, its changes have not been without controversy, with Internet service providers calling on FNOs like Metrofibre to stop forcing line speed upgrades on customers and rather offer cheaper services.

Herotel is the only major closed-access FNO on our list. “Closed access” means its network is not open to third-party ISPs like Afrihost, Axxess, Cool Ideas, Webafrica, Mweb, and the like.

It has 345,000 homes passed with fibre, although it is unknown exactly how many of these are connected to its network.

The company only provides combined numbers for wireless and fibre customers, which stood at 150,000 in December 2022.

Octotel is another significant player in the market, with over 300,000 homes passed and roughly 100,000 of those connected to its network.

The table below shows the number of homes passed and homes connected to the biggest fibre networks in South Africa.

Although the figure of around 1.5 million is impressive considering that it has surpassed the peak of DSL connections Telkom had in South Africa in 2016, fibre is still only available to a fraction of households.

According to Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey, there were an estimated 17.9 million households in the country by 2021.

Based on that number, only around 8% of the country’s households are connected to fibre.

When using the number of homes passed instead of homes connected, the percentage climbs to roughly 25%.

However, that number could include cases where connections from two or more operators are available to the same household.

Generally, however, FNOs tend to focus on areas where no other providers are available.

Reaching the unreachables

One major problem is that the densely-populated townships and informal settlements make up a large proportion of South Africa’s households.

For many operators, it did not make financial sense to expand to these areas as many of the residents would not have been able to afford the prices that more affluent customers do.

However, using aerial instead of trenched fibre and capitalising on the higher density of households has allowed several major operators to bring down rollout costs and launch projects dedicated to serving these previously-untouched markets at more affordable rates.

Vumatel’s projects are called Vuma Reach and Vuma Key, Openserve offers Web Connect, Frogfoot has Frogfoot Air, and Metrofibre’s lower-cost option is dubbed MetroConnect.

Most of these products are also available on a prepaid basis.

That makes it possible for users who have fluctuating income and cannot pay consistently to also get fast and reliable Internet when they need it and can afford it.

Now read: Stop forced fibre speed upgrades