Openserve free fibre speed upgrades announced

Many of Openserve’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) customers are getting free speed upgrades in the next few months.

Major Internet service provider (ISP) Afrihost, which resells Openserve FTTH packages, recently notified customers about the line speed increases via email.

Among them are MyBroadband Forum members who posted screenshots of the emailed notices on Monday, 30 October 2023.

The notification explained that customers’ lines would be upgraded at no additional cost between November and December 2023.

It also stated that this was not part of a promotion but was the customer’s new monthly package from now on.

An official Afrihost representative subsequently gave MyBroadband’s forumites a full breakdown of the Openserve line speed changes.

This showed that the entry-level asymmetric 40/20Mbps Openserve package would change to a 50/25Mbps service, while the symmetric 40Mbps package would be upgraded to 50/50Mbps.

The 75/50Mbps package will see its download speed increased to 100Mbps, while the 75/75Mbps package will have both download and upload speeds bumped up to 100Mbps.

Lastly, the 150/75Mbps package is increasing to 200/100Mbps, while the 150/150Mbps product’s speeds will be hiked to 200/200Mbps.

The speeds of the higher-end 300/100Mbps and 500/250Mbps packages will remain unchanged.

No clarity on prices from other ISPs

MyBroadband asked Openserve for feedback on the speed upgrades and what exactly they entailed, but we did not immediately receive a response to our queries.

The timing of the changes and the pricing adjustments might, therefore, vary between ISPs.

While it is unlikely that the line speed changes will be limited to Afrihost, some ISPs may need to implement price hikes to accommodate the increased bandwidth required for the higher-speed lines.

Afrihost could have opted to absorb any wholesale or bandwidth price increases, whereas other ISPs may not be in a position to.

The table below outlines the speed upgrades on Openserve’s network. The pricing only applies to Afrihost customers.

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