MetroFibre Did Raise Prices in 2026. Here's What We Got Wrong

Earlier in 2026, our own running timeline of every confirmed SA fibre price increase listed MetroFibre as the one major network that "hasn't moved yet," with a note to watch for a formal announcement later in the year. That was accurate at the time it was written - but it's no longer accurate now, and it's worth saying so plainly rather than quietly editing the record. MetroFibre has confirmed a 2026 wholesale price increase, and separately, its prepaid MetroConnect product has already gone up too. This article corrects that earlier report and lays out exactly what's confirmed, what isn't, and what it means if you're on a MetroFibre line.

MetroFibre Networx, like Vumatel, Openserve, Frogfoot and Octotel, is an open-access fibre network operator (FNO) - it builds and owns the physical fibre in the ground but doesn't sell directly to households. It sells wholesale access to ISPs (Afrihost, Webafrica, MWeb, Cool Ideas, Vox, RSAWeb and others), who add their own margin and resell the line to you. Two separate MetroFibre pricing changes landed in quick succession in 2026: a wholesale rate-card increase affecting standard home fibre packages, effective 1 June, and a prepaid pricing adjustment affecting MetroConnect vouchers on the Nexus network, effective a month earlier on 1 May. They're easy to conflate because they came from the same company within weeks of each other, but they're different products, different customers and different numbers - so we cover them separately below.

Here's what's actually confirmed, in percentage terms - MetroFibre has not published (and MyBroadband did not report) exact rand-per-tier figures for either change, so the numbers below are the full extent of what's verifiable right now:

The wholesale increase covers MetroFibre's standard home fibre packages across its network. MetroFibre cited macroeconomic pressures behind the move: general inflation, exchange-rate pressure, intensified loadshedding and other power outages, and the ongoing cost of cable theft and vandalism - all familiar cost drivers that other South African FNOs have pointed to in their own 2026 increases. The increase wasn't flat across the range: entry-level packages moved by only 1.96%-2.90%, while the average across all products landed at 5.29% and the single highest-moving tier rose 7.76%. That shape - protecting the cheapest packages while letting mid-to-top tiers absorb more of the increase - mirrors how Openserve's April 2026 increase was structured, even though the exact rand amounts differ.

The MetroConnect prepaid increase is a separate story entirely. MetroConnect is MetroFibre's prepaid, voucher-based product running on its Nexus network - the kind of pay-as-you-go fibre aimed at customers who don't want a monthly debit order. Its 30 Mbps product rose 18%-25%, hitting the 7-day, 14-day and 30-day vouchers. The 1-day voucher wasn't merely repriced - it was discontinued entirely. A MetroFibre spokesperson described the change as part of the company's "annual pricing review," reflecting "a combination of rising operational and infrastructure costs, as well as our continued investment in maintaining and expanding the MetroFibre Nexus network." Customers were notified of the MetroConnect change on Saturday 25 April 2026, ahead of it taking effect on 1 May.

A genuine gap in the public record: neither change has a published rand-value rate card that we could find or verify. If you see a specific "MetroFibre 50/50 Mbps went from RX to RY" claim anywhere else dated around this increase, treat it as unverified unless it cites MetroFibre's own notice or an ISP's customer communication directly - we did not find one, and we're not going to invent rand figures to fill the gap. That's also why our own price-change tracking records this MetroFibre change with the percentages only, the same way it already handles Vumatel's unpublished per-tier rate card from April 2026.

• 1 April 2026 - new customers signing up month-to-month on MetroFibre's Nova and Nexus networks began paying the new wholesale pricing from this date, ahead of the wider rollout to existing customers.
• Saturday 25 April 2026 - MetroConnect prepaid customers on the Nexus network were notified of the 18%-25% voucher price increase, effective from 1 May.
• 1 May 2026 - the MetroConnect prepaid increase took effect: the 7-day, 14-day and 30-day vouchers moved to their new prices, and the 1-day voucher was discontinued.
• 2 May 2026 - MyBroadband published its report on the wholesale increase, which is the primary source for the percentage figures in this article.
• 1 June 2026 - the wholesale increase took effect for most existing MetroFibre customers, reflected in their June invoices and onward.

One detail worth flagging for anyone comparing notes with a neighbour: two customers on the same MetroFibre wholesale line could have started paying the new rate on different dates depending on whether they were a new month-to-month sign-up (from 1 April) or an existing customer (from 1 June) - a two-month gap that's easy to mistake for a billing error if you don't know it was built into the rollout.

MetroFibre's stated reasoning for the wholesale increase leans on the same cluster of cost pressures every South African infrastructure operator has cited this cycle: general inflation eating into margins, exchange-rate volatility on imported network equipment, the direct and indirect cost of intensified loadshedding and other power outages (diesel for backup generation isn't cheap, and neither is battery replacement on a schedule outages force), and the increasingly expensive problem of cable theft and vandalism, which every open-access FNO in South Africa has had to budget more for build-and-repair costs around in recent years.

For the MetroConnect prepaid line specifically, MetroFibre's framing was narrower and more product-specific: an "annual pricing review" reflecting rising operational and infrastructure costs and continued investment in maintaining and expanding the Nexus network the product runs on. That's consistent with the wholesale rationale but scoped to the prepaid segment rather than the network as a whole.

It's also worth noting what MetroFibre didn't do: it didn't apply a flat percentage across every tier. Protecting entry-level packages (1.96%-2.90%) while letting the average and the top tier absorb more (5.29% and 7.76% respectively) is a deliberate choice about who bears the increase - and it's the same basic structure Openserve, Frogfoot and Octotel all used in their own 2026 rate-card changes, even though none of the four networks coordinated with each other.

With MetroFibre's increase now confirmed, every one of South Africa's five major open-access fibre networks has raised wholesale prices at some point in 2026. Our full 2026 price-increase timeline covers all five in one place; this section pulls out the direct comparison. Where a network published an exact rand-per-tier rate card, we can compute a real average percentage change from our own tracked records rather than typing one in by hand: Openserve's confirmed tiers averaged +3.2% across 8 priced tiers effective 1 Apr 2026, Frogfoot's averaged +5.4% across 10 tiers effective 1 Feb 2026, and Octotel's averaged +3.9% across 8 tiers effective 1 May 2026.

MetroFibre's self-reported 5.29% wholesale average sits above all three of those computed averages, though the comparison comes with an honest caveat: Openserve's, Frogfoot's and Octotel's averages are computed directly from real published rand prices per tier, while MetroFibre's 5.29% is the percentage MetroFibre itself reported to MyBroadband, with no underlying rand table to check it against independently. Both numbers are legitimate to cite, but they're not derived the same way, and it's fairer to readers to say so than to present them as identical in kind. Vumatel's April 2026 increase is the closest parallel to MetroFibre's situation - also confirmed, also without a published per-tier rate card - and we cover it in our separate Vumatel April 2026 price change piece.

The MetroConnect prepaid increase (18%-25%) is a different kind of comparison, since none of Frogfoot, Openserve, Vumatel or Octotel's 2026 changes touched a directly equivalent prepaid product in the same reporting window. What it does show is that MetroFibre's prepaid segment moved by a noticeably larger percentage than its standard wholesale fibre - worth knowing if you or someone in your household relies on MetroConnect vouchers rather than a monthly MetroFibre line.

Whether you're on a standard MetroFibre wholesale line or MetroConnect prepaid vouchers, here's how to work out what actually changed for you:

• Identify which product you're actually on. A standard monthly MetroFibre line through an ISP is affected by the wholesale increase (effective 1 June for most existing customers); MetroConnect vouchers on the Nexus network are affected by the separate prepaid increase (effective 1 May). They're not the same change.
• Compare invoices either side of your product's effective date. For a standard line, compare May 2026 to June 2026. For MetroConnect, compare the price of a voucher bought before 1 May to one bought after.
• If you used the 1-day MetroConnect voucher, know it's gone. It was discontinued outright as part of this change, not merely repriced - if you relied on it, you'll need to move to a 7-day, 14-day or 30-day voucher instead.
• Don't expect a rand figure you find online to be a confirmed one. Because MetroFibre hasn't published a per-tier rate card, any specific rand amount circulating for this change is, at best, one ISP's own pass-through decision - not a confirmed network-wide figure.
• Compare against the live market. If your MetroFibre-based bill moved by noticeably more than the percentages in this article, the gap is coming from your ISP's own margin decision. Check current pricing on MetroFibre lines across ISPs on our MetroFibre network page, or compare more broadly on our best fibre deals page.

With this confirmation, MetroFibre joins Frogfoot, Openserve, Vumatel and Octotel as a network that has moved on 2026 wholesale pricing - closing out the one open item in our running annual timeline. If MetroFibre settles into the same roughly annual cadence the other four networks have followed, the next wholesale review is likely around mid-2027, though nothing about that is confirmed yet and we won't publish a date until MetroFibre or an ISP does.

We're leaving this note in the piece deliberately: this article exists specifically because an earlier claim on this site turned out to be wrong once more information became available. If MetroFibre publishes an actual rand-value rate card for either change, or confirms further adjustments, we'll update this page rather than leave a stale percentage-only account standing.