Fibre price hikes in South Africa

At least three major fibre network operators (FNOs) are increasing the prices of their fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) lines over the next few months, while another is likely to hike its fees towards the end of 2025.

Most large FNOs in South Africa are open-access, meaning they resell their lines to numerous Internet service providers (ISPs) at wholesale prices.

The ISPs load additional charges on these prices before selling them to end-users to cover their operational costs — including maintaining customer support channels and marketing.

They also have to add a profit margin on the prices to make for a viable business.

In some cases, an ISP may absorb an FNO’s wholesale price hike and keep their end-user pricing the same, cutting into their profit margin.

However, in many instances, ISPs increase their prices following a wholesale adjustment to ensure they can continue covering operating costs while maintaining a healthy profit margin.

Since they are the companies that deal with customers directly, ISPs are often criticised for increases that are not their own doing.

Another contentious point concerning prices in the FTTH industry in recent years has been forced upgrades.

While some customers would be more than satisfied with a cheap line offering 5Mbps or 10Mbps speeds, major FNOs have largely phased these out in favour of 20Mbps+ offerings.

In more affluent neighbourhoods, 50Mbps is becoming the minimum speed available on FTTH.

In many cases, these products also come with a bigger price tag, which is forced on the customer.

FNOs have attributed the adjustments to the increased popularity of bandwidth-demanding applications like video streaming.

MyBroadband asked the seven biggest FNOs in South Africa about their plans for prices in 2025.

Prices are typically adjusted at least annually, often in the first few months of a year.

Vumatel, Frogfoot, and Herotel confirmed their annual price hikes were happening in the first half of 2025.

Vumatel said it would implement “nominal” adjustments to its pricing from 1 April 2025.

It explained these changes were necessary to account for current market conditions, inflationary pressures, and a general increase in operational costs.

“However, we will ensure that the services remain affordable and competitive within the broader market,” Vumatel said.

Another major FNO — Frogfoot — is hiking its wholesale prices charged to ISPs from 1 February 2025.

“This increase reflects rising operational costs and our ongoing investment in maintaining and expanding a reliable, high-quality fibre network,” Frogfoot said.

Frogfoot said these adjustments were communicated to its partner ISPs in October and November 2024 to ensure they had adequate time to plan and adjust their offerings accordingly.

South Africa’s biggest closed-access FNO — Herotel — said it would also increase prices to keep up with inflation.

“These changes usually happen in May or June every year and we aim to maintain this schedule for 2025,” the FNO said.

Herotel’s last price change was implemented in June 2024, with only its entry-level 50Mbps FTTH package getting a R30 hike from R549 to R579. Its other plans’ prices were last adjusted in June 2023.

MetroFibre hikes probable later in 2025 — other FNOs unclear

South Africa’s third-largest open-access FNO — MetroFibre — said it had not yet finalised plans to increase FTTH prices.

However, it said “reasonable” price increases in line with inflation were probable towards the end of 2025, given that the cost of doing business was also increasing year-on-year.

Openserve, Octotel, and Zoom Fibre did not provide feedback by the time of publication.

Openserve typically adjusts its FTTH pricing from 1 April, the start of the financial year of its parent company Telkom.

In 2024, Openserve FTTH users started receiving notifications about their price hikes from ISPs in late February.