Most affordable 500Mbps and faster fibre packages in South Africa

South African residents can get the fastest fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) Internet package — 1Gbps — for as little as R799 per month, provided they are in an area with Cybersmart coverage.

South Africa currently has eight major fibre network operators (FNOs) offering FTTH services to roughly 2.4 million homes.

Telkom recently revealed that its wholesale fibre network, Openserve, had expanded to pass 1.3 million homes and that 667,465 households are connected to it.

This was reported in a trading statement for the third quarter of the 2024/25 financial year.

“We continued to prioritise fibre connections as we passed homes with an additional 100,115 homes connected, up by a strong 17.6%,” said Telkom Group CEO Serame Taukobong.

While Openserve has the second-largest FTTH network in the country, it has the highest connectivity rate of any other FNO in South Africa at 49.8%.

However, it should be noted that Openserve counts any house with a fibre drop installed as a home connected to its network, regardless of whether it has an active service.

Vumatel has the largest FTTH network in the country, having passed roughly 660,000 more households than Openserve and connecting nearly one million of them.

Herotel is the third-largest FTTH provider in the country, with 574,976 homes passed and 213,883 connected.

However, its third-place position could be under threat.

Cape Town-based consortium African Infrastructure Investment Managers recently acquired ownership of Octotel and a controlling stake in MetroFibre.

For reference, the MetroFibre network had passed 510,000 homes and connected 172,000 as of December 2024.

Octotel’s figures are a bit more dated. It had passed 360,000 homes and connected 112,500 as of June 2024.

If you combined these figures, the networks would have passed at least 870,000 homes and connected nearly 300,000, putting them into third place by some margin.

Most affordable 500Mbps or faster FTTH packages

MyBroadband searched for the most affordable FTTH packages in South Africa that offer download speeds of 500Mbps or higher.

Based on these criteria, one would have expected that a 500Mbps package would be the most affordable available.

However, Afrihost offers Cybersmart’s symmetrical 1Gbps for R799 per month, beating the most affordable 500Mbps package by R46 per month.

The Cybersmart package is also on promotion, where customers will receive the service free of charge for the first two months.

The second-most affordable package is Demux’s symmetrical 500Mbps package, available through RSAWeb for R845 per month.

In third is Cometel Communications’ symmetrical 500Mbps connection through Cool Ideas. However, there is a marked step-up in price, with the package costing R1,028 per month.

Other prominent Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Webafrica and Axxess also offer some of the most affordable 500Mbps or faster FTTH packages in the country through FNOs like Zoom Fibre, Vumatel, Openserve, and MetroFibre.

The table below lists the 20 most affordable fibre packages available in South Africa with download speeds of 500Mbps or higher. We included both symmetrical and asymmetrical packages.