RSAweb on Openserve 2026

Almost every price in the table above is an introductory rate. RSAweb bills it for 2 months and then charges the standing rate, so the number on the advert is not the number you live with for most of year one. The figure below ranks the whole Openserve pool twice over — as advertised, and as it actually bills.

RSAweb’s own step-up, line by line

This is the mechanism behind every ranking on this page, so it is worth seeing whole rather than summarised. The step-up is the difference between what RSAweb advertises and what it bills from month 3 onwards.

The “not published” rows are the honest gap, not an oversight. 300/150 Mbps and 500/250 Mbps carry a discount off a higher standing rate with no end date RSAweb publishes anywhere we could verify. A twelve-month total for those lines would require us to invent the window, so there is none on this page — and both tiers are excluded from the twelve- and twenty-four-month rankings below for the same reason.

Over twenty-four months the introductory months barely register and the standing rate is almost the whole bill, which reorders the table again. This is the view that counts if you are not planning to move.

Openserve is a wholesale network, so RSAweb is not selling a different line from its rivals — it is selling the same physical fibre with a different bill attached. Identical network, identical speed pair, and the only variable is the ISP. That makes this the cleanest comparison on the site, and it is unkind to the page’s own subject.

Of the 11 Openserve speed pairs we track, RSAweb sells 11 and competes against at least one rival on 10. It has the lowest advertised price on 8 of those, the lowest twelve-month cost on 3, and the lowest twenty-four-month cost on 1. Three numbers describing the same catalogue at three distances.

Read the rows rather than the totals. The seller who wins the advert and the seller who wins the second year are not the same company on this network, and that is the whole argument for printing a cost-of-ownership column at all.

The worked example: 1000/500 Mbps

This is the sharpest case on the network, and it is derived rather than chosen: the contested tier where RSAweb’s advertised lead is largest in rand and it still loses the second year. RSAweb advertises R997/month against Webafrica’s R1 549/month — a R552 a month saving on the shelf price, for the identical physical line.

A reader who priced that line off the advert would expect to save R6 624 in year one. The published rates say they would pay R356 more over those twelve months, and R2 108 more over twenty-four. The advert is not wrong about month one. It is wrong about the decision.

The same effect without a headline gap to warn you about it is 200/100 Mbps: RSAweb advertises R897 against MWeb’s R959 — the lower of the two — and still costs R386 more over twelve months, R13 244 against R12 858. There is no way to see that on a price-sorted table.

Nothing above is a story about RSAweb charging more. Its standing rates sit mid-pack and its advertised rates are the lowest on the network more often than anyone else’s. The rankings invert because of a single variable that no price-sorted table shows: how long the discount runs.

RSAweb's window is as short as any published on the network, and it is the only seller applying it to every one of its 11 rows, and it sits behind the deepest discounts on it. MWeb and RSAweb are the only sellers whose every Openserve row is discounted, which means they have no flat row to fall back on. On 1000/500 Mbps the bill moves from R997 to R1 695 in month 3 - a 70% increase, and the steepest step-up on any line in this comparison. A seller with no promo at all has nothing to revert to, which is how a flat catalogue ends up cheaper over a year than one that advertised below it every month.

The practical reading: if you are confident you will move, cancel or re-shop inside the intro window, the advertised ranking is the right one and RSAweb usually wins it. If you expect to keep the line, use the twenty-four-month column, because that is the bill you will actually pay. Openserve lines are month-to-month, so re-shopping is genuinely available — it just requires you to remember to do it.

75/75 Mbps: nobody else sells this tier

Across the 5 ISPs we track on Openserve, RSAweb is the only one listing 75/75 Mbps at R697. That cuts both ways and the honest version is worth stating: there is no rival price to undercut it, and equally no rival price to check it against. It is the one part of this page where our cross-ISP method has nothing to say.

Two different lines at the same advertised price

A reader scanning RSAweb’s own table by monthly price cannot see this, and it is the single most actionable thing in the catalogue:

• 50/50 Mbps and 75/75 Mbps both advertise R697 — identical on the shelf, for 25 Mbps more download. The standing rates do not match: R795 against R845, so the faster line costs R50 a month more once the intro ends. Over twelve months that is R9 344 against R9 844 - R500 more for the faster line.

Openserve has passed 1 565 750 homes and connected 843 563 of them as at Jun 2026 (Telkom Q1 FY2027 trading update, 3 Aug 2026), a take-up rate of 54%. Telkom’s wholesale network is the one most likely to be live at an address outside the established metro suburbs that Vumatel and Octotel concentrate on, which is the practical reason an Openserve page matters more than its rating suggests.

On service rather than reach it sits mid-table: ISPA’s member survey scores Openserve 6.5 on 38 responses, 2 of 8 among the networks classed as major (-0.2 on the previous survey). That is a network-level measure of how the FNO handles faults and installs, and it is independent of which ISP you buy from.

It also moved its wholesale prices this year, which is why a figure you saw in 2025 will not match the table above. 8 tiers changed with effect from 1 Apr 2026:

Our full network page covers coverage, install times and every seller on it: Openserve fibre, and Openserve fibre deals prices every ISP on the network side by side.

Right for you if…

• You want 30/30 Mbps or 50/50 Mbps or 100/50 Mbps — RSAweb is the cheapest seller on these tiers over a full twelve months, not just on the advert. Over twenty-four months that narrows to 50/50 Mbps.
• You will re-shop inside the intro window — RSAweb advertises the lowest price on 8 of 10 contested tiers. If you are genuinely willing to move when the rate steps up, that is the ranking that applies to you, and these lines are month-to-month.
• You want the once-off stated up front — RSAweb publishes its order-processing fee per product, which is what makes the all-in totals on this page computable. MWeb publish no per-product figure at all.
• Value per megabit is what you are buying — 1000/500 Mbps at R997 works out to R1.00/Mbps, against R14.57/Mbps on 30/30 Mbps. On this ladder the fast end is the good value, which is the opposite of most readers’ assumption.
• You want 75/75 Mbps — no other ISP we track sells it on Openserve, so RSAweb is the only route onto that rung.

Look elsewhere if…

• You expect to keep the line for two years — RSAweb is the cheapest Openserve seller over twenty-four months on 1 of 10 contested tiers. Webafrica is cheapest on 7 of them, and that is the horizon most households actually live with.
• You want 50/25 Mbps — Afrihost costs R8 364 over twelve months against RSAweb’s R8 444, a difference of R80 for the identical physical line, even though RSAweb’s advert is the lower of the two.
• You want 100/100 Mbps — Webafrica costs R11 508 over twelve months against RSAweb’s R11 544, a difference of R36 for the identical physical line, even though RSAweb’s advert is the lower of the two.
• You want 200/100 Mbps — MWeb costs R12 858 over twelve months against RSAweb’s R13 244, a difference of R386 for the identical physical line, even though RSAweb’s advert is the lower of the two.
• You want 200/200 Mbps — Webafrica costs R13 668 over twelve months against RSAweb’s R13 744, a difference of R76 for the identical physical line, even though RSAweb’s advert is the lower of the two.
• You want 1000/500 Mbps — Webafrica costs R18 588 over twelve months against RSAweb’s R18 944, a difference of R356 for the identical physical line, even though RSAweb’s advert is the lower of the two.
• You want 300/150 Mbps or 500/250 Mbps and you want to know the year-one cost before you order — RSAweb discounts those lines without publishing how long the discount runs, so neither we nor you can total them honestly. Rivals on the same tiers do publish a window.
• Openserve is not what is live at your street — then none of the prices above can help you. Coverage is decided by which network reached your door, not by which ISP you prefer. Start at the fibre coverage map or the Openserve coverage map instead.
• You want a prepaid or no-debit-order line — every price on this page is a monthly subscription. RSAweb also sells Openserve passes you buy one at a time, covered on RSAweb Openserve prepaid — read the hardware note there first, because the prepaid ONT has no Ethernet port.

If the lowest bill on this network is what you are optimising for, Openserve fibre deals ranks every seller on it, and cheapest fibre deals does the same across every network. RSAweb’s other networks are on RSAweb fibre deals.