South Africa’s fixed broadband market is expanding rapidly, with fixed wireless access (FWA) becoming more important.

Opensignal’s analysis, in its ‘South Africa Fixed Broadband Experience’ report, shows that the market is expanding through both fibre and fixed wireless, with the latter offering a faster and lower- cost way to connect homes.

However, the report indicates that while subscriptions had reached 1.26-million by the end of March, up 39% year-on-year, fixed Internet at home remains limited, with only 17.4% of households having Internet access specifically at home.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa also reported strong growth in 2025, with fixed broadband subscriptions rising 19.3% year-on-year to 3.26-million and fibre-to-the-home/business subscriptions increasing 22% to 3.01-million.

The findings of the ‘South Africa Fixed Broadband Experience’ report reflect how competition is intensifying across both fibre and wireless technologies, with quality of experience becoming a key differentiator for consumers.

This market dynamic is also shaping operator strategy.

The report shows that Vox ranked as the best home Internet in South Africa, leading across all five core metrics, including download speed experience, upload speed experience, reliability experience, video experience and consistent quality.

Vox’s home fibre offer covers all nine provinces and spans speeds from 4 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s.

Vox leads on consistent quality, reflecting a more consistently usable experience and outperforming rivals, with 55.8% of tests meeting recommended performance thresholds for activities such as high-definition streaming, group videoconference calls and games.

Vox tops both speed metrics, with its strongest lead in upload speed, which reaches 17.5 Mb/s, while its download speeds reach 24.9 Mb/s.

The company also has the most reliable fixed broadband network, winning the reliability experience award with a score of 363 points on a 100 to 1 000 scale, as well as the video experience with 66.1 points.

The reliability experience metric measures how consistently a household can connect to the Internet and successfully complete tasks, while video experience reflects the quality of video streaming over home broadband.

Data-only operator rain, whose position in the market is most closely tied to FWA, with a market strategy centred on 5G home broadband rather than fibre resale, ranks second for download speed, reliability experience and video experience.

Opensignal users on rain record average download speeds of 23.9 Mb/s, while the operator scores 332 points for reliability experience and 62.9 points for video experience, second only to Vox in all three categories.

Its consistency quality score is 50.4, while its upload speeds were recorded at 7.8 Mb/s.

HeroTel, the third largest fibre network, operating in more than 500 towns and municipalities across all nine provinces, recorded a consistency score of 51.7 and a reliability score of 330.

The group’s download speeds reach 18 Mb/s and upload speeds reach 10.6 Mb/s, while its video experience achieved a score of 61.1.

Vodacom’s fixed broadband position strengthened meaningfully through the acquisition of its effective 30% stake in Maziv in December 2025, which provided it with exposure to one of South Africa’s largest open-access fibre networks. 

Vodacom achieved a consistency score 51.3, a reliability score of 246 and a video experience score of 55.2. The company had download and upload speeds of 19.8 Mb/s and 11.1 Mb/s. 

Telkom remains the largest player by scale, supported by its Openserve network, which boasts in excess of 1.5-million homes passed and 786 490 homes connected, with an industry-leading 52.4% connectivity rate.



The company’s consistency score reached 49.7, while its video experience and reliability scores recorded at 59.3 and 220 respectively. Its download and upload speeds were recorded at 16.2 Mb/s and 9 Mb/s.

Meanwhile, MTN recorded a consistency score of 47.7, video experience score of 56 and reliability score of 228, with download speeds of 16.3 Mb/s and upload speeds of 7.7 Mb/s.