Fibre war in South Africa — 100Mbps uncapped packages compared
Wirulink provides cheaper 100 Mbps fibre packages than some of its larger competitors, such as Afrihost and Axxess, a MyBroadband analysis has shown.
There was generally a difference of R100 to R200 between the cheapest and most expensive Internet service providers (ISPs) for a given fibre network operator (FNO).
Octotel, Herotel and MetroFibre outperformed Frogfoot, Vumatel, and Openserve in terms of the prices offered by FNOs. Octotel emerged as the cheapest FNO for most ISPs.
Fibre package prices are set in combination between (ISPs) such as Afrihost, Axxess and Herotel and fibre network operators (FNOs) such as Vumatel, Openserve and Frogfoot.
FNOs are the companies that install fibre infrastructure in neighbourhoods and connect homes, complexes, buildings and businesses to the fibre network.
ISPs compete to offer fibre packages to consumers over the infrastructure installed by FNOs, typically buying wholesale capacity and packaging it into products.
Herotel is the exception in our analysis, as the company acts as FNO and ISP. Consumers have no choice of ISP on Herotel — they can only use Herotel.
Herotel says middlemen like ISPs add to the price paid by consumers.
Although the company offers the lowest prices of any combination in our analysis, it recently announced a price increase that will significantly erode its pricing lead.
The analysis
Symmetrical packages with equal download and upload speeds were selected for this comparison.
Frogfoot and Openserve do not offer a 100Mbps fibre package, making them challenging to compare.
Their 150Mbps packages were used for this analysis, although it should be noted that Frogfoot has a cheaper 80Mbps service and Openserve a 75Mbps one.
Some FNOs charge a once-off installation fee that ISPs pass on to customers, while others do not. Some packages offer a router as part of the package. These price differences have not been factored into the analysis.
The table below summarises the price comparison:
| 100Mbps uncapped residential fibre price comparison | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100Mbps | Vumatel* | Openserve (150Mbps) | Frogfoot (150Mbps) | MetroFibre | Octotel | Herotel |
| Afrihost | R927 | R997 | R957 | R897 | R827 | – |
| Axxess | R945 | R1,055** | R1,035 | R905 | R825 | – |
| Cool Ideas | R899 | R1,143 | R949 | R899 | R933 | – |
| RSAWeb | R975 | R1,095 | R1,015 | R955 | R855 | – |
| Wirulink | R869 | R995 | R830 | – | – | – |
| Atomic Access | R999 | R1,049 | R1,049 | – | R999 | – |
| Home Connect | R888 | R1,048 | R928 | R858 | R898 | – |
| Herotel | – | – | – | – | – | R699*** |
| * Vumatel has announced that it is increasing prices on 1 June. ISPs are still informing subscribers what the price increase will be. | ||||||
| ** Axxess is running a promotion on its Openserve products. Users would pay R695 for the package for the first two months. We have quoted the regular pricing in the comparison. | ||||||
| *** Herotel announced it would raise prices on 1 June 2023 owing to ongoing load-shedding, inflation and occasional theft and vandalism. The new price will be R749 for the package. This is the first time the company will have raised prices in three years. | ||||||
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