MWeb on MetroFibre: the 12-month cost against every other ISP

Every MWeb MetroFibre line is sold at a promotional rate for three months, and the step-up is a flat rand figure rather than a percentage — which means it bites hardest at the bottom of each ladder. On Metro Nexus every line steps up by exactly R150/mo, so the entry line absorbs a 40% increase against 9% on 1000/500 Mbps. On Metro Nova the step is R100/mo, which is 22% on the entry line. Both tables below charge the promo months at the promo rate and the rest at the standing rate, and then add the published once-off in a column of its own so the all-in figure visibly reconciles with the numbers beside it.

The gap between the advertised figure and the averaged one is the part worth budgeting for. 30/30 Mbps on Metro Nexus advertises at R379 and averages R512/mo across the first year once the once-off is spread over it — and the recurring-only total alone is R1 350 more than twelve times the advertised price. On Metro Nova the same arithmetic on 30/30 Mbps comes to R900 over the advert.

Every MetroFibre row in our catalogue publishes its once-off. That is unusual and it matters for what this page can honestly claim. All 36 monthly Metro Nexus rows across five ISPs, and all 27 Metro Nova rows across four, carry a stated figure — Afrihost R0 (stated), MWeb R249, RSAweb R250, Vox R50–R230 by line and Webafrica R249 — so the all-in column above is a real total rather than a monthly-only figure wearing a total’s name. On networks where a seller publishes nothing, this site records the field as not established and refuses to total it, because an unset fee is a gap in the data and not a free installation.

This is the strangest thing in the MetroFibre catalogue and it is worth more to a reader than any ranking on this page. MWeb’s 500/500 Mbps line at R749/mo on Metro Nexus is cheaper than three of its own slower tiers — including the 250/250 Mbps, which costs R240/mo more for 50% of the download. Buying 2.0x the speed saves you money.

The obvious objection is that this is a promotional artefact that unwinds in three months. It is not. The same inversion holds on the standing rate — R240/mo once both promos have expired — and it holds over twelve months of billing, at R2 880. On rand per megabit it is not close either: R1.50/Mbps against R3.96/Mbps.

MWeb is not alone in this. MWeb and Webafrica both price at least one faster Metro Nexus line below one of their own slower ones, and Afrihost, RSAweb and Vox do not — their Metro Nexus ladders price in order all the way up. So this is a pricing decision by two particular ISPs on one particular footprint rather than something MetroFibre does at wholesale, which is also why it can disappear without warning: nothing about the network obliges it to continue.

The bottom rows of that table are the counter-example, and the reason the “holds after the promo?” column exists at all. RSAweb's 80/80 Mbps on Metro Nova and Vox's 40/40 Mbps on Metro Nova undercut a slower line this month and stop doing so once the promotional window closes — over twelve months the faster line is the dearer one. An inversion that reverses is not a buying instruction, which is why the two kinds are labelled rather than counted together.

Note also what the inversion does not extend to. MWeb’s Metro Nexus ladder tops out at 1000/500 Mbps at R1 699, which is R950/mo above the 500/500 Mbps line for 2.0x the download and the same upload — R1.70/Mbps against R1.50/Mbps. The cheap fast line is the sweet spot on this footprint, and the rung above it is where the value stops.

MetroFibre is open access, so on any tier two sellers both list, the fibre, the ONT and the trench are identical and the only variables are price, contract and support. Five ISPs we track resell Metro Nexus — Afrihost, MWeb, RSAweb, Vox and Webafrica — across 8 speed pairs, and MWeb competes on 8 of them.

The advert and the first year are two different rankings

Advertised price and cost of ownership are not the same ordering, and on Metro Nexus they part company on 3 of the 8 contested tiers. MWeb leads the advert on 2 and leads twelve-month recurring cost on 2. The cause is structural rather than a quirk of one package: MWeb runs the longest promotional window on the network at three months and also the largest step-up at R150/mo, so it wins the first quarter and then spends the remaining nine months being undercut by sellers whose standing rate is lower.

The most expensive case is 1000/500 Mbps. MWeb advertises R1 699/mo against Webafrica’s R1 239 — a gap of R460/mo that a reader waves away. Costed over twelve months it is R21 738 against R15 868: R5 870 more for the identical physical line, which is 12.8x what the monthly difference implies. Over twenty-four months the same tier costs R11 990 more, because the promo stops mattering and the standing rate is almost the whole bill.

The clearest argument for printing a cost-of-ownership column at all is a different tier: 250/250 Mbps, where MWeb is only R50/mo above Webafrica on the advert and R950 above it over the year — 19 times the monthly gap. A difference small enough to ignore on a price table is the single largest multiple on this footprint.

The figure below ranks the Metro Nexus pool twice over — as advertised, and as it actually bills with the step-up and the once-off included — so the rows that move are visible at a glance.

And a third ranking, because every seller here publishes its once-off

The table above excludes once-off charges deliberately, so that a seller’s twelve-month total always adds up from the monthly rates printed beside it. On most networks that is as far as an honest comparison can go, because at least one seller publishes no installation figure at all and folding a guess in would flatter it. Metro Nexus is the exception: all 36 rows state a once-off, so the all-in ranking below is genuinely comparable.

It moves MWeb on 30/30 Mbps, and the reason is the one line of the comparison nobody advertises: Afrihost states a zero installation charge where MWeb publishes R249. On a cheap entry line that single charge is worth more than several months of the monthly difference, which is why the once-off belongs in a column rather than a footnote.

The two figures below take the same Metro Nexus pool and ask the two questions a price table cannot: what the identical line costs from the cheapest and the dearest seller on each tier, and how each ISP on the network actually places across the ladder as a whole.

Metro Nova is where most readers assume the Metro Nexus answer carries over, and it does not. Four ISPs sell it in our catalogue — Afrihost, MWeb, RSAweb and Vox — one fewer than Metro Nexus, and the ladder is not the same shape: Metro Nova carries 50/50 Mbps, 80/80 Mbps and 1000/250 Mbps where Metro Nexus does not. MWeb competes on 6 of 11 tiers here and leads the advert on 5 of them — a much stronger position than it holds on Metro Nexus — but only 3 survive a full year’s costing.

The sharpest case on this footprint is 80/80 Mbps, where MWeb advertises R649/mo against RSAweb’s R599 and ends the year R340 behind — 6.8x the advertised monthly gap. Smaller in rand than the worst Metro Nexus case by R5 530, which is itself the point: the same ISP on the same operator’s two brands is a materially different buy, and a page that merged them would report one number for two answers.

The once-off matters more here than on Metro Nexus, because MWeb’s advertised lead at the bottom of the ladder is thin. On 30/30 Mbps it ranks #1 on recurring charges and #2 all-in and 80/80 Mbps it ranks #2 on recurring charges and #3 all-in. The monthly saving takes most of a year to repay the difference in the once-off.

four Metro Nova tiers MWeb does not sell at all

A comparison that only lists what the subject sells is not a comparison. These Metro Nova tiers are live with another ISP and absent from MWeb’s range entirely, so if one of them is the line you want, no amount of comparing MWeb prices gets you there.

Read that table before concluding the gaps matter. three of the four are single-seller tiers nobody else lists either, and MWeb’s own Metro Nova rungs bracket most of them closely enough that the choice is a rung up or a rung down rather than a different ISP. The one gap that is genuinely a gap is at the top: 1000/500 Mbps from Afrihost at R1 447 and Vox at R1 619, against MWeb’s own 1000/250 Mbps at R1 329 — cheaper than either rival gigabit line, and 50% of their upload. If the upload is what you are buying the gigabit for, that is not a substitution and MWeb cannot sell you the line.

Over twenty-four months the promotional months barely register and the standing rate is almost the whole bill, which reorders the Metro Nova table again. This is the view that counts if you are not planning to move house, and it is run on Metro Nova rather than Metro Nexus so the two horizons on this page cover both footprints instead of the same one twice.

Across twenty-four months MWeb leads two Metro Nova tiers against three over twelve, and three tiers reorder against two on the shorter horizon. The longer you expect to stay, the less the promo should weigh in the decision — which is the opposite of how a promotional price is designed to be read.

MetroFibre had 510 000 homes passed and 172 000 connected as at Jun 2025 (TeleGeography) — an uptake rate of 33.7%, on the 4th largest footprint of the 8 networks we track. That uptake figure is the lowest of the four networks that pass at least as many homes — Vumatel 44.1%, Openserve 53.9% and Herotel 56.5%. MetroFibre converts fewer of the homes it has already passed than any larger network does, which is the datum behind its own 2026 decision to stop chasing new rollout and saturate what it has built. We covered that pivot in MetroFibre hits the brakes on new rollout.

For a buyer that cuts both ways. A network with headroom on its own footprint has every incentive to keep wholesale pricing competitive, which is part of why Metro Nexus is the most keenly contested footprint on this site — five sellers on 8 of 8 tiers, with the spread between cheapest and dearest on a single tier reaching R720/mo. It also means a thinner installed base to spread fixed costs across, which is the usual prelude to a wholesale increase.

In ISPA’s own February 2026 survey of the networks — 406 ratings from 45 member ISPs across 11 metrics — MetroFibre scores 6.4 from 31 rating ISPs, which places it 3rd of the 8 networks classed as major. That score rests on the 2nd largest number of raters of any network in the survey, so it is better supported than most — and it moved -0.3 against the previous round. Read it for what it is: the ISPs who install and support on the network rating the network, not a customer poll. It is also 15% below the best-rated major, Octotel, and above Liquid Intelligent Tech, Frogfoot, Link Africa, Dark Fibre Africa and Vumatel.

MetroFibre moved on price twice in 2026, and neither move came with a per-tier rate card we could record — which is itself the data point. The network published percentages, so this site holds percentages and no invented rand figures.

The full breakdown of what MetroFibre confirmed, what it did not, and what it means for a bill is in our MetroFibre 2026 price-change analysis. The practical consequence for this page is simple: a wholesale increase reaches every reseller eventually, so the twelve- and twenty-four-month totals above are what today’s rate card produces, not a promise about next year’s.

On the ISP side rather than the network side, MWeb scored 72.6% satisfaction in MyBroadband’s Q1 2026 analysis of ~1 million speed tests, placing it 2 of 12 ISPs measured. A well-regarded ISP is a real argument for paying a little more. It is not an argument for paying R5 870 more over a year, which is what the worst tier on this page costs — and the two sentences are not in tension, they are the whole reason this site prints a cost column next to a reputation.