According to Valve data, Afrihost is the best major South African ISP for downloading Steam games.
Steam shows the average download speeds of the ten most popular ISPs from each country – and Afrihost currently holds the top two spots for South Africa.
According to Steam’s data, the Afrihost Fibre network averages 87.7 Mbps, while the Afrihost “Other” network averages 71.7 Mbps.
Steam does not disclose what the “Other” categorisation refers to – but given AirMobile has its own listing, it is likely to be Afrihost’s Pure Wireless 5G offering.
The chasing pack
The next best ISPs after Afrihost are NTT Data and Vox Telecom – which offer 66.2 Mbps and 66.1 Mbps average download speeds respectively.
Axxess Networks is the other ISP with over 60Mbps average speeds, having recorded a 64.7 Mbps average.
At the bottom of the list are HeroTel with 36.9 Mbps, Telkom with 34.9 Mbps, and rain with 29.7Mbps.
It is important to know that this list only includes the ten most popular ISPs in the country.
Therefore, there may be smaller ISPs that achieve higher average download speeds than Afrihost, or lower speeds than Telkom, HeroTel, and rain.
The top 10 ISPs in South Africa are listed below – sorted by average download rate.
| ISP | Average Download Rate |
|---|---|
| Afrihost Fibre | 87.7 Mbps |
| Afrihost Other | 71.7 Mbps |
| NTT Data | 66.2 Mbps |
| Vox Telecom | 66.1 Mbps |
| Axxess Networks | 64.7 Mbps |
| AirMobile | 58.1 Mbps |
| Vodacom Business | 50.5 Mbps |
| HeroTel | 36.9 Mbps |
| Telkom Internet | 34.9 Mbps |
| rain | 29.7 Mbps |
The Steam data also ranks the top ten ISPs by total bytes delivered to the network – or in other words, which ISPs have the most Steam traffic.
NTT Data is at the top of this list, followed by Vox Telecom and Telkom Internet.
Afrihost Other was in fourth place, while Afrihost Fibre was in eighth place.
Then vs now
In 2019, MyBroadband performed a similar analysis to the one above.
The average download speed in 2019 across all ISPs was 11 Mbps – and it is now a much more impressive 49.2 Mbps.
The slowest of the top ten ISPs in 2019 was Telkom Internet, which had an average download speed of only 7.4Mbps.
The fastest average download rate was 30.4 Mbps by Cool Ideas, and it was one of only two ISPs (alongside Afrihost) to average over 20 Mbps average speeds.
In contrast, 2026 data shows that every top 10 ISP achieves over 20Mbps average speeds – and the industry-leading Cool Ideas of 2019 would only beat rain today.
Other interesting insights when comparing 2019 and 2026 include:
- Afrihost Fibre and Telkom Internet have more than quadrupled their average Steam download speeds.
- Vox Telecom has more than tripled its speeds.
- Axxess Network has increased its speeds over six-fold.
This has all happened with significantly increased download volumes.
In 2019, South Africans had downloaded 568.6TB on Steam over the preceding seven days.
In 2026, this figure is now 4.6PB – over eight times higher than the 2019 figure.
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