South African fibre, measured
The numbers behind the market: how fast South African fibre really is, how quickly it's growing, which networks the industry itself rates highest, and what a megabit actually costs today. Independent sources only - every figure is named, dated and never estimated.
Updated · pricing figures recompute from our live deal database on every deploy
Fibre lines have doubled in two years
South Africa passed three million fibre subscriptions in 2025 - up 22% in a year, while DSL keeps shrinking (227 420 lines left, -6%). Still, only 17.4% of households have a fixed connection at home, which is why rollout pace matters.
Source: Icasa State of the ICT Sector Report, 31 March 2026 (subscriptions as of 30 September each year). Household figure: Stats SA General Household Survey 2024, as cited by Icasa.
Where SA sits in the world
South Africa's median fixed download is 49.74 Mbps - #111 globally and well below the global median of 125 Mbps. The gap is mostly line-speed mix, not network quality: most SA homes buy 20-100 Mbps packages even where gigabit is available, and the median reflects what people buy.
Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index, median fixed broadband download, May 2026 - cross-checked against DataReportal and other mirrors of the same index.
The fixed median has nearly plateaued since 2025 - growth has shifted to line-speed upgrades within existing connections and to new fibre areas, covered in the adoption numbers above.
Networks, rated by the ISPs that use them
Twice a year Ispa asks its member ISPs to score the fibre networks they resell on 11 metrics - reliability, support, open-access fairness. 45 ISPs submitted 406 ratings in the latest round. Survey average: 6.2/10.
Source: Ispa fibre network operator perception survey, February 2026 (published 30 June 2026). Challenger networks are rated by fewer ISPs (8-12), so treat their scores with wider error bars.
The fastest fixed ISPs in SA
Ookla's Speed Score weighs the download, upload and latency that each ISP's customers actually measured across ~8.4 million fixed-network Speedtests - not the speeds on the price list. Cool Ideas won the award by a wide margin.
Source: Ookla Speedtest Award for South Africa, Q1-Q2 2024 - the latest award Ookla has published for SA fixed ISPs. Newer "scores" circulating online could not be verified against Ookla, so we don't show them.
How customers rate their ISP
MyBroadband's Insights panel asks users to rate their ISP after every speed test - ~1 million speed tests in the latest quarter. The top three are separated by barely two points, while the mobile operators' fixed offerings trail the fibre-first ISPs.
Source: MyBroadband Insights, Q1 2026 customer satisfaction report (published April 2026). Afrihost is also MyBroadband's 2026 ISP of the Year, its fourth consecutive title.
Homes passed vs homes connected
Passing a home means the cable reaches the street; connecting it means someone signed up. The gap between the two is the industry's biggest commercial question - Openserve currently converts the highest share of the majors.
Sources: Telkom FY2026 results (Openserve), Remgro FY2025 results (Vumatel), ITWeb June 2026 (Herotel), TeleGeography FTTH tabulation, Feb 2026 (others). As-of dates differ per network and are shown on each row.
What a megabit costs right now
Computed from the 358 live fibre deals listed on this site - so unlike survey data, these numbers move whenever the market does. The rule of SA fibre pricing: the faster the tier, the cheaper each megabit gets. Icasa's affordability benchmark pegs entry-level fixed broadband at R309/month.
Source: FastestFibre live deal database (all listed ISPs and networks), recomputed at every deploy. Median R/Mbps uses download speed.
| Speed tier | Cheapest deal | Median R/Mbps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 25 Mbps57 live deals | R29520/10 Mbps Uncapped - RSAweb on Openserve Web Connect | R28.85 | |
| 26-50 Mbps88 live deals | R37930/30 Mbps Uncapped - Mweb on Metro Nexus | R14.97 | |
| 51-100 Mbps71 live deals | R59960/30 Mbps Uncapped - Mweb on Frogfoot | R9.49 | |
| 101-500 Mbps111 live deals | R610120/60 Mbps Uncapped - Vox on Frogfoot | R4.78 | |
| Gigabit (501+)31 live deals | R7991000/1000 Mbps Uncapped (Cybersmart) - Mweb on Openserve | R1.56 |
Icasa's Bi-Annual Tariff Analysis samples FTTH package prices across networks (as at 30 June 2025); the "cheapest here" column is the lowest-priced live deal at that download speed on this site today.
| Symmetric tier | Icasa sampled average | Cheapest live deal here |
|---|---|---|
| 25/25 Mbps52 packages sampled | R571 | R39925/25 Mbps Uncapped - Mweb on Octotel |
| 50/50 Mbps104 packages sampled | R780 | R50550/25 Mbps Uncapped - Vox on Vumatel |
| 100/100 Mbps110 packages sampled | R942 | R695100/50 Mbps Uncapped - Vox on Vumatel |
Compare the tiers deal-by-deal on the live deals table, or check whether gigabit is worth it before buying the biggest line.
Sources & how to read this page
Independent measurement
Speed figures come from Ookla's Speedtest Global Index and Speedtest Intelligence (crowdsourced, measured, not advertised). Network ratings come from Ispa's member survey - ISPs scoring the wholesale networks they depend on. Subscription counts come from Icasa's State of the ICT Sector report. None of these are provided or sponsored by any ISP.
Operator-reported figures
Homes passed/connected are what operators disclose in financial results and interviews (Telkom, Remgro, Herotel) or TeleGeography's tabulation of those disclosures. As-of dates differ per network and are printed on every row - we never normalise or estimate to a common date.
Our own live data
Pricing benchmarks are computed at build time from every deal listed on FastestFibre - the same database that powers our comparison tables. They update automatically whenever deals change, and reflect promo pricing where a promo is the listed price.
What we never do
No estimates for missing values - undisclosed figures render as undisclosed. No mixing of survey rounds. When a source updates (Ookla monthly, Ispa twice a year, Icasa annually), this page is updated with the new round and re-dated.
Seen enough numbers?
Put the benchmarks to work - compare every live fibre deal by network, speed and price.