Slowest fibre speeds in South Africa

The slowest download speed available on a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connection in South Africa in March 2025 is 5Mbps.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, several major fibre network operators (FNOs) increased their entry-level FTTH speeds to accommodate a surge in bandwidth demand.

Rising adoption of video streaming, video conferencing, and cloud and file-sharing services are among the apps requiring increased speeds.

The forced upgrades have not always been well received by customers, especially those who feel satisfied with the speed of their old package at a cheaper price.

MyBroadband looked at the FTTH packages offered through one of the biggest Internet service providers (ISPs) in South Africa — Afrihost — to see what the minimum speeds supported on more than two dozen fibre networks in South Africa were,

Until recently, Balwin Fibre’s 4Mbps line took the cake in this area, but the company has since replaced its entry-level offering with a 15Mbps package.

Small FNO Comtel Connect now offers the slowest FTTH download speed in South Africa — 5Mbps.

This connection is just fast enough to support a single full HD stream on Netflix and will take about 27 minutes to download a 1GB file.

A modern 100GB game will take nearly two days to download.

It is also just 1Mbps above what was considered to be mid-level ADSL speeds a few years ago.

The package’s saving grace is a very low price of R307, which is among the cheapest FTTH prices on the market.

That means it is ideal for a household with minimal speed requirements, assuming their property falls within Comtel’s relatively small footprint.

The package with the slowest FTTH upload speed is provided by larger FNO Evotel, whose entry-level product on Afrihost offers just 2Mbps uploads.

Upload speeds are generally not as important as download speeds, but a higher rate may be key for certain applications like file sharing and online gaming.

The most common entry-level download speed was 10Mbps, followed by 20Mbps and 25Mbps.

The country’s fifth biggest FNO by homes passed — Frogfoot — had the fastest entry-level download speed among major networks — 60Mbps.

However, Cybersmart’s fibre network had the fastest entry-level FTTH download and upload speeds — 1Gbps. This is also the fastest FTTH speed available in South Africa.

The table below summarises the entry-level FTTH packages available through all FNOs supported by Afrihost, ranked from slowest to fastest.