South African fibre company goes quiet on massive price hikes and speed downgrades

Fibre network operator (FNO) Zoom Fibre has refused to comment on a major overhaul of its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) packages, which will result in huge price hikes for most of its customers.

The restructuring has not gone well with several third-party Internet service providers (ISPs) selling Zoom Fibre’s products, primarily because of the impact it will have on lower-income customers.

From June 2025, Zoom Fibre plans to scrap its three entry-level packages with symmetric speeds of 15Mbps, 20Mbps, and 30Mbps.

Its new entry-level offering will be a 50/50Mbps package, which comes with a much higher wholesale line price than the aforementioned products.

As a result, ISPs have little choice but to increase their pricing, which will result in customers on the most affordable package paying hundreds of rands more per month.

Sources in the industry have said they will have to increase the prices charged to customers previously on the 15Mbps package by somewhere around R350 to R450.

In many cases, these customers’ monthly fibre bills will be over double what they currently pay.

While the packages will get a significant speed boost, many people have specifically chosen the lower speeds for their affordability.

“We estimate that the vast majority of customers on Zoom Fibre currently sit on the entry-level speeds,” one source said.

Another source said they had lodged a complaint with Zoom and shared their concerns regarding the changes but had not heard back from the FNO.

It is not only the lower-end customers that will be worse off from June 2025.

Zoom Fibre is also downgrading the speeds of its top-end 500Mbps and 1Gbps packages to 250Mbps and 500Mbps, respectively, while still increasing their prices.

Only customers currently on the 50Mbps package will be getting some relief with a 3.77% wholesale price decrease.

A source in the industry shared a summary of the changes in the operator’s wholesale pricing on a percentage basis.

Prepaid shenanigans

A resident on the West Coast also recently reached out to MyBroadband alleging that Zoom Fibre had started aggressively advertising its own ISP’s prepaid fibre product Zoom Flex shortly after notifying ISPs about the wholesale overhaul.

“This service allows them to sell lower-priced packages directly to the community on a prepaid basis, effectively cutting out the ISPs and offering much lower prices than what was initially available to them,” the resident complained.

MyBroadband has since learnt that the prepaid product is also available to all third-party ISPs.

However, it is only offered in selected areas and is allegedly poorly managed, which has resulted in limited adoption outside Zoom’s ISP business.

“Reactivating the service can take over a week, and there is minimal technical support available,” the resident said.

They have also alleged that Zoom Fibre had been given the sole mandate by the Saldanha Bay Municipality to establish smart city infrastructure through community fibre connections in the municipality’s towns.

“Instead, they have caused significant disruption to small ISPs and negatively impacted the majority of residents on the West Coast.”

The resident contends that 70% to 80% of West Coast residents are using the lower-priced packages that are falling away.

“The Saldanha Bay Municipality, known for its relatively low household income, is particularly vulnerable to these changes,” the resident complained.

After initially ignoring MyBroadband’s requests for comment, it eventually said its official position was that it would not be providing feedback.

MyBroadband asked the Internet Service Providers Association (Ispa) whether it was aware of Zoom Fibre’s changes and if it had received any complaints from member ISPs about them.

The association acknowledged “unconfirmed media reports” of Zoom Fibre’s package restructuring to accommodate the introduction of the prepaid offering.

“Ispa will seek to engage with Zoom Fibre to better understand its approach and address any material concerns about the impact on consumer choice and competition in the ISP industry,” the association said.