Fastest Internet for under R1,000 in South Africa

South Africans with a monthly budget of R1,000 for Internet expenses can buy fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) packages with download speeds ranging from 100Mbps to 250Mbps, depending on the fibre network operator (FNO) in their area.

When Vumatel first launched its FTTH offerings with what would turn out be a groundbreaking rollout in Parkhurst in 2014, a 100Mbps package cost users R6,599 per month.

In the fibre gold rush that followed, FTTH speeds increased significantly at the entry-level, and prices of higher-end packages were slashed as bandwidth costs became cheaper.

Amid surging demand for higher speeds for remote working and education during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, FNOs upgraded packages for limited periods.

This included doubling entry-level customers’ speeds at no charge.

By 2022, some of these upgrades were made permanent, and at least five of the country’s major FNOs offered sub-R1,000 packages with 100Mbps download speeds.

These days, several offer packages with download speeds exceeding 100Mbps for under R1,000.

MyBroadband compared options available from five major Internet service providers (ISPs) across the eight biggest fibre networks in the country to see which offered the fastest speeds at this price point.

The fastest package for under R1,000 was a 250/250Mbps plan from MetroFibre, which has the country’s third-biggest open-access network and fourth-largest network overall.

A 250Mbps connection can download files at up to 31.25MB/s. If it is not being used for anything else at the time, it should take roughly 53 minutes to complete a 100GB game download.

The speed is also sufficient for up to 17 simultaneous 4K Netflix streams.

The 250/250Mbps MetroFibre package was available from all the ISPs in our comparison, apart from Herotel, which only serves customers on its own fibre network.

RSAWeb had the lowest price for the service, at R895 per month.

The next fastest package under R1,000 was on Frogfoot’s network and offered 240Mbps download speeds.

The most affordable option for this plan was Axxess, which costs R950 per month and offers a 120Mbps upload speed.

Symmetric packages are also available on this plan, with the most affordable being available through Mweb.

For those within the coverage area of the second biggest FNO in the country — Openserve — the fastest sub-R1,000 package boasts a 200Mbps download speed and 100Mbps uploads through Mweb at R999 per month.

Two other major FNOs — Herotel and Zoom Fibre — also offered packages with up to 200Mbps download and upload speeds for under R1,000.

Herotel’s was exclusively available through its own ISP, while Axxess was the only ISP with Zoom Fibre’s 200Mbps option for under R1,000.

The fastest speed available for under R1,000 across the major ISPs we considered from South Africa’s biggest FNO, Vumatel, was 100Mbps.

We summarised our findings in the table below.

Where a price has been bolded and highlighted in a certain colour, it is the most affordable option for the fastest speed available under R1,000 per month on a particular network.

The following colour coding was used:

• Pink — Vumatel
• Dark green — Openserve
• Orange — Herotel
• Blue — Metrofibre
• Light green — Frogfoot
• Yellow — Octotel
• Cyan — Evotel
• Red — Zoom Fibre

The packages have been ordered first by download speed and then by price.

Black Friday deals and special promotions were not considered for the comparison.

One noteworthy mention in this regard is that RSAWeb is currently offering a 400/200Mbps Octotel package for R895 for the first two months.