{"id":631717,"date":"2026-03-04T14:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=631717"},"modified":"2026-03-04T14:01:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T12:01:30","slug":"warning-to-fibre-networks-increasing-prices-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/631717-warning-to-fibre-networks-increasing-prices-in-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Warning to fibre networks increasing prices in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africans have become increasingly agitated with annual price increases on fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) packages in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The frustration has reached a point where many of MyBroadband’s readers have expressed interest in inferior broadband technologies \u2014 even if that meant they would have to switch to a capped package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been a rapid expansion of FTTH across millions of households in South Africa over the last decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A healthy open-access market has developed with multiple fibre network operators (FNOs) providing infrastructure and dozens of Internet service providers (ISPs) selling a wide range of products at varying prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The home broadband industry is much healthier than in the Telkom-monopolised DSL era of the 2000s and early 2010s, where slow speeds and poor customer service were the order of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most households, FTTH still offers the best value for money among broadband Internet options due to its bandwidth, low latency, and overall reliability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FNOs also won plenty of favour among customers with free speed increases on packages during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in the last three years, many of the country’s FNOs have increased wholesale prices without any speed upgrades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This came after a period of forced upgrades, where customers saw their speeds increased while prices remained roughly the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many customers said they would have preferred to keep their previous, slower speeds and receive a price decrease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Competition Commission’s inaugural Cost of Living report, published in September 2025<\/a>, highlighted a concerning trend in fibre prices in recent years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It found that fibre broadband prices were increasing faster relative to inflation than mobile and fixed wireless Internet services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While wireless Internet prices increased by only 1% between January 2022 and early 2025, fibre prices had surged by 14%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last two years in particular, MyBroadband has seen complaints from many fibre users considering cancelling their packages and moving to more affordable fixed-LTE or fixed-5G plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many said they would be willing to live with stricter fair usage policies (FUPs) and lower speeds to save money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some users are even considering satellite Internet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Starlink at a game lodge in Limpopo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Following the recent FTTH increases announced by Vumatel and Openserve, MyBroadband was surprised that many readers even floated the idea of moving to Starlink once it becomes available locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starlink is not intended to compete with high-capacity fixed services in urbanised areas; it is primarily aimed at rural Internet users with limited or no other broadband options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those environments, it has often proved it can offer much higher speeds, connection reliability, and lower latency than competing products like geosynchronous satellite, at much lower prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it would not be completely unprecedented for Starlink to win a few fibre customers in cities. However, this has usually occurred in areas with little meaningful FTTH price competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starlink was forced to pause new orders for nearly two years in several sub-Saharan African cities due to unprecedented demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these cities \u2014 like Harare in Zimbabwe \u2014 already had high-speed uncapped residential fibre Internet. However, these packages were much more expensive than similar services in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starlink launched in Zimbabwe with subscriptions starting at $30 (R492) per month for a connection offering download speeds over 100Mbps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The development forced several local Internet service providers<\/a> to lower their prices or risk an exodus of customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa has a much more advanced and competitive fibre industry than Zimbabwe, so an immediate surge in urban uptake is unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, FNOs should not underestimate the fact that Starlink’s prices in the region are highly competitive with entry-level uncapped fibre, fixed-LTE, and fixed-5G packages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Starlink offered packages with pricing similar to what it charges in some of South Africa’s neighbours, it could become a viable alternative to FTTH, especially for those primarily seeking high speeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starlink performance and prices in neighbouring countries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Network<\/th>Download speed<\/th>Upload speed<\/th>Latency<\/th>Starting price<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Lesotho<\/td>287Mbps to 413Mbps<\/td>26 to 72Mbps<\/td>23 to 26ms<\/td>R540<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Eswatini<\/td>226Mbps to 346Mbps<\/td>31 to 59Mbps<\/td>24 to 26ms<\/td>R540
<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Botswana<\/td>191Mbps to 341Mbps<\/td>26 to 53Mbps<\/td>26 to 32ms<\/td>
BPW400
(R492)<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Mozambique<\/td>162Mbps to 314Mbps<\/td>25 to 50Mbps<\/td>28 to 35ms<\/td>MZN1,900
(R492)<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Zimbabwe<\/td>81Mbps to 272Mbps<\/td>17 to 42Mbps<\/td>29 to 46ms<\/td>$30
(R496)<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fibre Internet is by far the best type of broadband available, but continued price increases in recent years have some South Africans looking into inferior alternatives with lower prices. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":477895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[77174,20153,69345,11375,48987],"class_list":["post-631717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","tag-fibre-internet","tag-fibre-to-the-home-ftth","tag-home-fibre","tag-spacex","tag-starlink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631717"}],"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\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631717"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631798,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631717\/revisions\/631798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}