Bad news for fibre prices in South Africa

At least five of South Africa’s largest fibre network operators (FNOs) and some smaller FNOs are hiking prices on their home products over the coming months.

The country’s two dominant FNOs — Vumatel and Openserve — are increasing their wholesale fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) prices from April 2025.

These FNOs cover roughly 3.3 million properties with FTTH, 1.6 million of which have a line active or ready to go live in their home.

Vumatel and Openserve have communicated the changes to Internet service providers (ISPs) that resell their products to end users.

While ISPs can set their own end-user prices, an increase in wholesale prices often requires them to hike their fees to ensure cost recovery and a reasonable profit margin.

In recent days, customers with various ISPs have started receiving notifications of how the adjustments will impact their pricing.

Based on the notices Afrihost sent customers, the prices of several Vumatel products are being increased well above inflation.

For example, the 50/25Mbps package is jumping from R597 to R687 — a 15.8% hike.

Based on early feedback from ISPs, the biggest percentage-based increases have been on lower-end speeds, while faster packages are getting below-inflation hikes.

South Africa’s third-largest FNO — Herotel — also plans to increase pricing sometime during the first half of 2025. Its previous pricing adjustments were also implemented in June.

Herotel is a closed-access FNO and resells packages through its own ISP business. That means it will be the sole source of information for price adjustments.

ISP Webafrica told MyBroadband that several other major FNOs were also increasing their prices in the coming months and that, in some cases, the hikes compared to previous years were “quite scary.”

The country’s sixth-biggest FNO Octotel — which is primarily operating in Cape Town — is increasing its prices from May 2025.

It will be followed by Zoom Fibre — the country’s seventh-largest FNO — in June 2025.

The only major operator that has not yet formally communicated its plans — MetroFibre — is potentially planning price adjustments in September 2025.

The company previously told MyBroadband that “reasonable” price adjustments would probably be implemented later in 2025.

A source at another prominent ISP confirmed that it had also received communication from two smaller FNOs — Balwin Fibre and TT Connect — about incoming price increases.

South Africa’s fifth-largest FNO Frogfoot already increased prices on its FTTH products in February 2025, following an announcement in December last year.

Below is the timeline for FTTH price changes in South Africa in the coming months.

Going against the global flow

The continued annual hikes in FTTH prices are noteworthy, considering fixed Internet prices are coming down globally.

According to Surfshark’s Digital Quality of Life Index, the time of work needed to afford a fixed broadband Internet package in 121 countries declined by 15% (53 minutes) in 2024 compared to 2023.

South Africa moved up nine positions in Internet affordability in the 2024 DQL Index, but most of this was because our mobile Internet is becoming cheaper.

In that category, the country jumped 19 positions from 63rd to 44th, with the time needed to afford mobile Internet plunging from an hour and 26 minutes to an hour and 5 minutes.

In fixed Internet, which includes FTTH, South Africa only climbed one spot, with the time of work needed to afford one of these plans at one hour and 34 minutes.

One development that has potentially contributed to the slight decline in fixed Internet affordability is the introduction and expansion of low-end fibre products like Vuma Key, priced from R99 per month.

The table below summarises the April price changes on Vumatel and Openserve that major ISPs have confirmed to MyBroadband.

Vumatel

Openserve