The South African ADSL service provider (ISP) market is becoming increasingly competitive with companies slashing their margins to remain competitive. 

New entrants like Afrihost changed the previous per-GB pricing models with their R29 per GB data bundles, and more recently providers like Axxess and Web Africa pushed the limits even further.

MWEB really put the cat amoung the pigeons with its affordable uncapped ADSL service in March this year, forcing other providers like Internet Solutions and Vox Telecom to follow suit.

South African ISP market share

Aggressive prices are typically a sign that a company is fighting for a larger market share, begging the question what the current South African ADSL ISP landscape looks like. 

MyBroadband asked the various ISPs for their subscriber numbers to produce a list of the largest ADSL players in the country.

It should be noted that the subscriber reporting methods differ from one ISP to the other.  While some ISPs may include all their prepaid and postpaid subscribers (which often includes thousands of dormant accounts), others only report on active monthly subscribers being served.

The latest figures confirm that Telkom still dominates the retail market with MWEB well positioned in second place.  Internet Solutions also continued its strong performance in the wholesale market.

Vox Telecom/@lantic is another large player in the ADSL space.  Despite the fact that the company’s broadband strategy is to attract high-end customers rather than high volumes, it still ranks as one of the country’s top ADSL providers.

Unfortunately Nashua Mobile and Altech did not provide any feedback by the time of publication which means they were not included in the table below.

The biggest ADSL ISPs

The following table provides an overview of the largest ADSL ISPs in the country.  As mentioned previously ISPs may use different methods to count their subscriber numbers, often resulting in inflated figures from some providers.

It is however challenging to get results for very specific subscriber definitions, and the figures below represents the exact figures which ISPs provided when questioned about their subscriber base.

ADSL ISP subscriber numbers
ADSL Service Provider	Subscriber numbers
Telkom Do Broadband	236,512
Internet Solutions (wholesale)	230,000
MWEB	150,000
Axxess	70,000
Vox Telecom/@lantic	37,000
Web Africa	30,000
Cybersmart	30,000
Afrihost	30,000
FNB Connect	20,000
G-Connect	15,000
Internet Solutions (Directly to market)	9,000
Sainet	8,500
Openweb	5,600