![\"Cool](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Cool-Ideas.jpg\")
<\/a>Andre Jooste and Paul Butschi<\/p><\/div>\n
Paul Butschi and Andre Jooste, who co-founded Cool Ideas, shed light on their journey to the top of the South African ISP rankings.<\/p>\n
Cool Ideas was started in 2011 as a hosting company and pivoted into the fibre-to-the-business market using DFA\u2019s network.<\/p>\n
When Vumatel rolled out its first fibre-to-the-home network in Parkhurst in 2014, Cool Ideas was perfectly positioned to take advantage of this opportunity.<\/p>\n
Cool Ideas became the first ISP on Vumatel\u2019s network and connected the first home in Parkhurst in 2014.<\/p>\n
They started to hand out flyers in the area to sign up new subscribers and grow its consumer ISP business. This worked out better than they could have imagined.<\/p>\n
Since these humble beginnings Cool Ideas has grown to nearly 50,000 subscribers and over 100 staff members.<\/p>\n
Their singular focus on fibre-to-the-home services helped them to maintain good service levels on both network performance and customer support during this growth.<\/p>\n
The secret behind Cool Ideas\u2019 success, Jooste said, is their strong belief in customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is pivotal for us to make sure we keep our customers happy, give them the best service, and give them a great Cool Ideas experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Rain CEO Brandon Leigh<\/p><\/div>\n
On the other end of the scale, Rain was the worst rated service provider with a customer satisfaction score of 55%. It was the only large ISP which scored below 60%.<\/p>\n
Rain\u2019s low customer satisfaction rating is a result of two factors \u2013 poor network performance and lacking client support.<\/p>\n
The operator\u2019s median download speed on its fixed-broadband network over the last quarter was 6.4Mbps. This is much lower than what most subscribers expect.<\/p>\n
There are also numerous complaints about billing problems, customer support issues, and network downtime.<\/p>\n
ARC co-CEO Johan van Zyl recently told investors Rain is well-aware of these problems and that they are actively addressing them.<\/p>\n
Van Zyl said Rain is expanding coverage, protecting against load-shedding outages, and employing more support staff to improve customer support.<\/p>\n
Rain has also made customer satisfaction a key deliverable for the company\u2019s new management team to encourage improved performance.<\/p>\n
The table below provides the customer satisfaction scores and network speeds of prominent South African ISPs.<\/p>\n
It should be noted that the download speed, upload speed, and latency should not be seen as a measure of network quality.<\/p>\n
These speeds are mostly influenced by technology type and the speed profiles of subscribers, and not network quality.<\/p>\n