The most popular South African ISPs for gamers in 2022

South African online gamers need a fast, stable, and reliant internet connection with low network latency.

This will allow you to play any game without lag or disconnections from the server.

It is therefore important that gamers do their due diligence before deciding on an Internet Service Provider (ISP) — otherwise, you will have to sit and wait for days before you’re able to play your next favourite game.

According to Steam’s download stats, while Vox Telecom is the most popular ISP in South Africa based on the number of bytes delivered to the network, Cool Ideas offers the fastest average download speed.

Steam download speeds

It is critical to ensure that your download speed is high when accessing Steam’s servers.

The table below shows Steam’s top 10 most popular South African ISPs — sorted by the average download speeds for users.

ISP speeds on Steam
ISP Download Speed 
Cool Ideas 42.1Mbps
Afrihost [Fibre] 41.7Mbps
Web Africa 37.9Mbps
Vox Telecom 33.7Mbps
Afrihost [Other] 33.5Mbps
Axxess OPTINET 30.5Mbps
Vodacom Business 27Mbps
HeroTel 18.5Mbps
Rain 18.3Mbps
Telkom Internet 17Mbps

It is important to note that while there may be faster ISPs in South Africa, they did not feature in the top 10 most popular ISPs according to Steam.

At the time of publication, the average download rate over the past seven days was 24.9Mbps, while South African users had downloaded a total of 1.3 Petabytes (PB) – which accounted for just 0.2% of Steam’s global traffic.


ISP speeds in South Africa

The MyBroadband Insights report recently revealed the best-performing South African ISPs with the highest speeds.

The results are based on the data collected via MyBroadband’s speed test platform between 1 January 2022 and 31 March 2022.

Cybersmart offered the highest average download and upload speeds over this period — 118.55 Mbps for downloads and 113.55 Mbps for uploads.

Below is a table showing the average speeds recorded on South Africa’s biggest ISPs.

Fastest ISPs – Q1 2022
ISP Average Download Speed (Mbps) Average Upload Speed (Mbps)
Cybersmart 118.55 113.55
Cool Ideas 71.11 55.91
Webafrica 68.37 68.66
Metrofibre Networx 65.54 47.45
Afrihost 60.65 45.87
RSAWEB 59.73 48.16
Axxess 52.61 44.72
Home Connect 48.26 45.45
MWEB 43.13 35.48
Vox Telecom 40.62 38.25
Supersonic 34.52 36.79
Rain 34.36 20.21
Airmobile 33.56 28.75
MTN 33.10 23.57
Internet Solutions 30.49 33.70
HeroTel 30.06 30.94
Vodacom 28.65 20.59
Liquid Telecoms 24.36 25.51
Cell C 23.11 17.94
Telkom 21.66 16.04
Jenny-internet 8.93 15.80
Ikeja 3.94 6.14

South African ISPs average network latency

When gaming is concerned, download speeds aren’t the only important factor to consider.

Latency, also known as ‘ping’, refers to the time between the user issuing a command on their device, and the command being executed online.

This means that gamers also require a low network latency for the best online multiplayer experience.

The MyBroadband Insights report also recorded the average latency for each ISP and found that Cool Ideas came out on top with just 18.85 milliseconds (ms).

It is also worth mentioning that these latency speeds are also dependent on your individual connection quality and personal hardware, and they therefore should not be seen as a complete reflection of network performance.

The table below shows the average latency of the major South African ISPs.

ISP average network latency
ISP Average Latency (ms)
Cool Ideas 18.85
Home Connect 19.59
RSAWEB 20.57
Cybersmart 21.43
Webafrica 21.85
Metrofibre Networx 22.49
Vox Telecom 30.71
MWEB 31.5
Afrihost 33.7
Axxess 35.29
HeroTel 41.26
Supersonic 52
Internet Solutions 53.34
Vodacom 54.44
Liquid Telecoms 55.12
Jenny-internet 60.14
Telkom 60.31
Airmobile 66
MTN 72.92
Cell C 82.5
Rain 84.81
Ikeja 92.36

Read: Steam’s top 5 best sellers — 2 June

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The most popular South African ISPs for gamers in 2022

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