Every Confirmed SA Fibre Price Increase in 2026, Network by Network

If your fibre bill has crept up at some point in 2026, you're not imagining it - and you're probably not alone, whichever network your line actually runs on. Between February and May 2026, four of South Africa's five major open-access fibre network operators (FNOs) - Frogfoot, Openserve, Vumatel and Octotel - each confirmed and implemented their own wholesale price change. We've covered Openserve's April increase and Vumatel's April increase in detail elsewhere on FastestFibre. This piece does something different: it pulls every confirmed 2026 network price change into one place, in date order, so you can see the full picture regardless of which network your ISP resells.

A quick note on how fibre pricing actually works, since it explains why this happens on a rolling basis rather than all at once. Frogfoot, Openserve, Vumatel, Octotel and MetroFibre are all open-access FNOs - they build and own the physical fibre in the ground but don't sell directly to households. Instead they sell wholesale access to dozens of ISPs (Afrihost, Webafrica, MWeb, Cool Ideas, Vox, RSAWeb, Atomic and many more), who each add their own margin and resell the line to you. Each FNO reviews its own wholesale rate card on its own schedule - typically once a year - which is why these changes land in a staggered sequence rather than a single industry-wide event.

Here's every confirmed 2026 wholesale price change, in the order it took effect:

Below, each network gets its own section with the actual numbers where they've been published, plus what to do about it if your bill went up.

Frogfoot was first out of the gate in 2026, confirming a wholesale FTTH and interconnect price increase effective 1 February 2026 - its first change in about a year. The increase applied across its full home fibre range, with the rand increase scaling up at the faster, asymmetrical mid-tiers rather than following a flat percentage:

Frogfoot's ISP partners were notified with a deadline of 22 January 2026 at 14:00 for customers who wanted to upgrade, downgrade or cancel before the new rates locked in, with new pricing invoiced from 24 January and taking effect on customer accounts from 1 February. Frogfoot framed the increase around rising line and interconnect costs, and said proceeds would go toward network expansion and enabling more package options above 1Gbps.

The 240/120 Mbps tier stands out as the biggest single jump in the table - R150/month, more than double the increase on the tier either side of it - which is worth specifically checking if that's your package. If you're on Frogfoot and want to see what other ISPs charge for the same tier on the same line, compare live pricing on our Frogfoot fibre deals page.

South Africa's two largest fibre networks both moved on 1 April 2026 - each implementing their first wholesale price change in twelve months, but publishing the change very differently.

Openserve published a clear, tier-by-tier rate card change ranging from R20/month at its 50/25 Mbps entry uncapped tier up to R60/month at its fastest 500/250 Mbps line - a jump of roughly 2.5% to 4% depending on tier. Its cheaper Web Connect and 20/10-30/30 Mbps entry lines weren't touched by this specific change. We've broken the full table down, along with a checklist for your own invoice, in our dedicated Openserve price change explainer.

Vumatel, by contrast, didn't publish an exact rate card - the increase varied by tier and wasn't uniform, with entry-level Reach products (aimed at the underserved-area and township segment) seeing a smaller adjustment than mid-tier Core packages. What's consistent with Openserve's approach is that the size of the actual increase on your invoice depends heavily on which ISP resells your line - some, like Atomic, publicly said they'd absorbed part of the increase rather than pass it on in full, while others passed the wholesale change straight through. The full breakdown, including what to check on your own bill, is in our Vumatel April 2026 price change piece.

The practical takeaway from both networks moving on the same date: don't assume two households on the same network, same tier, saw the same increase. The ISP layer, not just the network, decides the final number.

Octotel's turn came on 1 May 2026, twelve months after its previous home fibre price update. Unlike the other three networks, Octotel used the moment to change its product lineup as well as its prices:

Two changes are worth calling out beyond the price increases themselves. First, Octotel introduced a new 55/55 Mbps symmetrical tier at R849/month, sitting between its 55/25 Mbps and 100/100 Mbps packages - a genuinely new option for households that want symmetrical upload for video calls or cloud backups without paying for a 100 Mbps line. Second, its 150/150 Mbps tier is being phased out for new orders; existing customers on it keep the package but move to the new price shown above.

Octotel's top 2500/2500 Mbps line was the one tier left untouched at R2,349/month, and its ISP partners had until 24 April 2026 at 14:00 to process upgrade or downgrade requests before the new pricing took effect. If Octotel is live at your address, see current retail pricing across ISPs on our Octotel fibre deals page.

That leaves MetroFibre, the one major FNO that hadn't confirmed a 2026 wholesale price change as of this article's publication date. Heading into 2026, MetroFibre indicated that any increase would likely land around the middle of the year and stay roughly in line with inflation rather than exceed it, citing the same rising operational costs - maintenance, power and ongoing network investment - that every other FNO has pointed to this year. No formal rate card, effective date or ISP notification wave has followed that statement yet.

If you're on MetroFibre, that means your invoice hasn't moved for network-driven reasons so far this year - but budget for the possibility of a moderate, inflation-linked increase later in 2026 rather than assuming the network is permanently holding the line. We'll update this piece, or publish a dedicated breakdown, once MetroFibre confirms actual numbers and a date.

It's tempting to read four wholesale increases landing in the same year as coordinated, but the more mundane explanation fits better: most FNOs review pricing once a year, typically anchored to their own financial cycle, and 2026 is simply the year several of those annual cycles lined up within a few months of each other. Every network cited a similar set of underlying pressures - civils and equipment costs, power (a real line item for infrastructure running through South Africa's electricity constraints), and the ongoing capital cost of extending coverage into new areas.

It's also happening against a backdrop of real structural change in the market. Vumatel's parent company Maziv passed the one-million-subscriber mark in February 2026 and has been expanding aggressively into townships and smaller towns through its Reach product and its Herotel acquisition - see our explainer on what the Maziv-Herotel deal means for SA fibre. Openserve, meanwhile, has spent 2026 pushing 1 Gbps home lines further into its footprint. Growth and investment on that scale isn't free, and price increases - even in a competitive market - are one of the ways FNOs fund it. None of that makes any individual increase more or less fair on its own merits, but it's useful context for why "the network is growing" and "the network raised prices" have both been true at the same time in 2026.

Whichever network your line runs on, the process for working out your real increase is the same:

• Find your network first. Not sure if you're on Openserve, Vumatel, Frogfoot, Octotel or MetroFibre? Your ISP's invoice or app usually states it, or you can check with our fibre coverage map.
• Compare the invoice from the month before the network's effective date to the month after. That's your real increase - not the difference from whatever promotional rate you originally signed up at, which may already reflect earlier changes.
• Match your tier against the tables above. If your invoice jumped by significantly more than the network-level number for your tier, the extra amount is coming from your ISP's own margin decision, not the network.
• Check whether your package was quietly restructured. Some ISPs use a wholesale price change as a moment to retire, rename or resize tiers - for example nudging you onto a slightly different speed at the same time as the price change. If your speed changed too, that's a repackaging, not a pure like-for-like increase.
• Compare live pricing on your own network. Use our best fibre deals comparison to see what other ISPs charge for the same tier on the same network right now.

Once you know your real increase, there are three practical responses:

• Switch ISP on the same line. Because every network here is open-access, moving to a cheaper ISP on the exact same physical line is usually a backend migration - no new installation, often completed within days. We cover the mechanics in how to switch fibre providers without losing connection. If you're paying R100+/month above the cheapest comparable package on your network, this is almost always worth doing.
• Downgrade your tier. If you're paying for more speed than your household actually uses, dropping a tier can offset most or all of a given year's increase. Our guide on how much internet speed you actually need is a useful gut check before you commit.
• Switch network entirely. Only worth it if a genuinely cheaper or better-value network is actually live at your address, since it typically means a new installation. Check what's really available at your address before assuming another network is automatically better.

The main open item is MetroFibre's still-unconfirmed increase - watch for an announcement in the back half of 2026 if the network holds to its own stated timeline. Beyond that, if the pattern set by Openserve and Vumatel repeats, the next wave of changes across all five networks is likely to land on a roughly annual cadence again in 2027, clustered around the same months these 2026 changes did. We'll keep this page - and the dedicated per-network breakdowns linked throughout - updated as new numbers are confirmed.

For now, the same practical advice applies regardless of network: read the actual number on your own invoice, compare it against what your network and your ISP have actually published, and check the live market before assuming your current price is still competitive.