Best cities and towns for fibre in South Africa

While South Africa’s major metros still offer the best fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) coverage, many smaller towns and settlements have tens of thousands of customers or connections.

FTTH has spread far and wide in South Africa in recent years, with more sparsely populated areas also hungry for fast and cost-effective uncapped connectivity.

MyBroadband asked the country’s eight biggest fibre network operators (FNOs) in which cities and towns they had passed the highest number of homes by November 2024.

The three FNOs that provided feedback had very different areas in their top 10s.

South Africa’s biggest FNO, Vumatel, provided us with a detailed breakdown of both its best-covered provinces and cities.

As expected, Gauteng had the highest number of homes passed, at 1,097,282, over half of Vumatel’s total of 2,055,962.

The Western Cape was in a distant second place with 446,814 homes passed, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 269,241.

The next three most-covered provinces were Limpopo (85,882), Free State (34,343), and the Northern Cape (15,415).

Vumatel is nearly non-existent in the North West, with just 79 homes passed.

In terms of cities, the Cape Town region led the way, with 426,495 homes passed with Vumatel fibre.

Johannesburg proper was second, with 241,873 homes passed, followed by Soweto with 179,841.

When adding fourth-placed Randburg with its 99,512 homes passed, the greater Johannesburg has about 90,000 more homes passed than the Cape Town region.

Pretoria placed fifth with 62,375 homes passed.

Outside the major metros, Polokwane in the Limpopo had the best Vumatel coverage, with 46,085 homes passed, closely followed by Phoenix in KwaZulu-Natal with 45,053 homes passed.

MetroFibre, South Africa’s third-biggest open-access FNO, said that most of its passed homes were in Gauteng, with a combined 280,000, primarily in parts of Pretoria and Johannesburg.

In KwaZulu-Natal, MetroFibre has passed 103,000 homes — spread out over Durban, Ballito, Umhlanga, Pietermaritzburg, and other small towns.

The Eastern Cape accounted for 59,000 homes passed, including Port Elizabeth, Jeffreys Bay, and St Francis Bay.

Of its 21,000 homes covered in Mpumalanga, the biggest chunk of customers reside in Emalahleni, also known as Witbank.

North West, the Western Cape, and the Northern Cape were the three least MetroFibre-covered provinces, accounting for a combined 31,900 homes.

Only 9,500 of these were in the Western Cape, where Beaufort West is one of MetroFibre’s most-covered areas.

The Free State and Limpopo were not mentioned in MetroFibre’s feedback.

In summary, the top cities and towns with MetroFibre connectivity in each province were as follows:

• Gauteng — Pretoria and Johannesburg
• KwaZulu-Natal — Durban, Ballito, Umhlanga, and Pietermaritzburg
• Eastern Cape — Port Elizabeth, Jeffreys Bay, and St Francis Bay
• Mpumalanga — Witbank
• North West — Klerksdorp, Bloemhof, and Christiana
• Western Cape — Beaufort West
• Northern Cape — Warrenton

Off the beaten track

South Africa’s biggest closed-access network — Herotel — has a very different top 10 than Vumatel, as it focuses primarily on underserved towns with smaller populations.

The city with the highest population in Herotel’s top 10 — East London — has 403,581 residents, making it only the eighth-largest city in the country.

The company has its origins as a fixed-wireless access provider but it has drastically increased its FTTH coverage with cost-effective aerial fibre rollouts.

Herotel provided MyBroadband with its figures for homes connected rather than homes passed.

The single area with the largest number of homes connected to Herotel FTTH is the township of Sebokeng with 36,961 live stands, followed by Tsakane, another township, with 30,701.

Jouberton (16,375), Kroonstad (15,650), and Duduza (15,528) made up the rest of the top five Herotel-connected areas.

Because Herotel’s coverage is spread out over more individual areas rather than large zones measured as a collective, it has smaller clusters of connectivity than other FNOs.

Nevertheless, these add up to a large sum, making Herotel the country’s third-biggest FNO overall.

MyBroadband also asked Evotel, Frogfoot, Octotel, Openserve, and Zoom Fibre for comment.

Only Openserve had responded by the time of publication and declined to provide figures, stating that this was “confidential” information.

The table below summarises the top 10 cities or towns with the most coverage or active connections from Vumatel and Herotel, the FNOs which shared specific city statistics.