A new report by Ookla shows that South Africans have benefitted from a sharp rise in fixed broadband speed over the past three years.
The report, published on the Ookla website, notes that fixed broadband adoption is still relatively low locally, while average speeds lag behind other BRICS countries such as Brazil and India.
In the first half of 2020, the median download speed in South Africa for fixed broadband networks was 15.11Mbps. For the first half of 2022, the median speed increased to 31.34Mbps.
The increase, according to Ookla, is due to more competition in the market and the increased rollout of fibre.
But only 10% of local households are connected to broadband, meaning there’s room for growth.
Who are the best fixed broadband providers in South Africa?
So with median speeds increasing overall, who are the fixed broadband providers contributing to this increase?
Ookla’s Speed Intelligence report for July 2022 places Cool Ideas as the leader of the pack. The ISP has dominated past fixed broadband ISP rankings for the past few reports.
Cool Ideas had a median download speed of 48.32Mbps and upload speed of 47.89Mbps as of the first half of 2022.
In second place comes Afrihost, with a media download speed of 38.35Mbps and upload speed of 32.23Mbps.
You can see the full rankings from Ookla and Speedtest below:
- Cool Ideas (48.32Mbps | 47.89Mbps)
- Afrihost (38.35Mbps | 32.23Mbps)
- Webafrica (38Mbps | 30.44Mbps)
- Vox Telecom (37.19Mbps | 37.42Mbps)
- Axxess (36.28Mbps | 35.06Mbps)
- rain (30.57Mbps | 6.07Mbps)
- MWEB (28.89Mbps | 23.91Mbps)
- Telkom (21.71Mbps | 15.99Mbps)
- HeroTel (19.91Mbps | 20.01Mbps)
Several fibre providers have also upgraded customers’ speeds for free. However, since many local fixed broadband providers rely on technology other than fibre optic networks, speeds can be impacted by the limitations of solutions such as fixed LTE and 5G.
Tech Valkyrie 