Mweb, which is owned by Dimension Data, has been put on the market with Standard Bank running the process. This is according to a well-placed source.<\/p>\n
Mweb is one of South Africa\u2019s oldest and best-known Internet service providers which offer a range of products, including fibre, LTE, ADSL, VoIP, and hosting.<\/p>\n
The ISP was founded in 1997 and quickly gained traction through its Big Black Box dial-up offering.<\/p>\n
Over the years it added new connectivity services, including ADSL in 2003, iBurst and 3G in 2006, and fibre-to-the-home in 2014.<\/p>\n
Mweb also shook up the broadband market in South Africa when it launched affordable uncapped ADSL in 2010. This was revolutionary at the time.<\/p>\n
By 2019 Mweb had grown its subscriber base to 350,000 users, which made it one of the biggest ISPs in South Africa.<\/p>\n
It is uncertain how much Dimension Data wants for Mweb, but Webafrica\u2019s price tag gives some indication of how much it may go for.<\/p>\n
When Webafrica was put up for sale in 2019 with the help of Standard Bank, they wanted around R300 million for the ISP.<\/p>\n
Webafrica had around 60,000 customers at the time and most industry players valued it at between R170 million and R220 million.<\/p>\n
Its biggest asset was its 35,000 fibre customers which was valued at around R5,000 per subscriber by most ISPs.<\/p>\n
A deal did not happen, but it does indicate how much large telecoms players are willing to pay for active fibre subscribers.<\/p>\n
The news that Mweb is up for sale comes three years after Internet Solutions (IS) acquired Mweb through parent company Dimension Data for around R130 million.<\/p>\n
At the time IS said the acquisition presents opportunities for growth through Mweb\u2019s customer base and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The sale of Mweb in May 2017 followed the sale of Mweb Business, which included Optinet Services and its Network Divisions, to Dimension Data in 2015.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Naspers and Dimension Data entered a joint Wi-Fi business venture called VAST, where Dimension Data owned 51% and Naspers owned 49%.<\/p>\n
Since then, many things have changed. VAST was shut down in October 2019 and Internet Solutions was absorbed into Dimension Data last year.<\/p>\n
With the new organisational structure at Dimension Data, it is not clear how Mweb fits into the company\u2019s future plans.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband asked Mweb and Dimension Data for comment, but they did not respond by the time of publication.<\/p>\n
Mweb, which is owned by Dimension Data, has been put on the market through Standard Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":382810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1691,35,213],"class_list":["post-382780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-dimension-data","tag-headline","tag-mweb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}