MyBroadband has released the August 2020 South African ISP rankings, which revealed that Cool Ideas, RSAWEB, and Afrihost are the top-rated Internet service providers in the country.
The rankings are based on 235,543 speed test and customer satisfaction ratings which were conducted using the MyBroadband Speed Test App in August 2020.
To ensure a neutral testing environment, MyBroadband’s speed test servers are hosted in Teraco’s vendor-neutral data centres.
MyBroadband has speed test servers at NAPAfrica’s peering points in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban.
After a user performs a speed test, they can rate their ISP based on their overall satisfaction with their provider.
These customer satisfaction ratings are then used to rank South Africa’s ADSL, fibre, fixed-LTE, and 5G ISPs.
It should be noted that these rankings only include fixed broadband tests which were conducted over Wi-Fi or a LAN. It therefore excludes mobile network tests.
Best and worst ISPs in South Africa
The top service providers in the latest South African ISP rankings were Cool Ideas, RSAWEB, Afrihost, and Supersonic.
At the other end of the scale, Telkom, Rain, and Herotel were ranked as the worst ISPs in South Africa.
The table below provides an overview of the customer satisfaction rankings of South Africa’s prominent ISPs in July.
The median download speed, upload speed, and latency of ISPs are also provided as a reference point.
It should be noted that these speeds are technology-dependent and should therefore not be seen as a reflection of network performance.
Only ISPs with a large number of speed tests and votes were listed.
| August 2020 ISP Rankings | ||||
| ISP | Latency (ms) | Download Speed (Mbps) | Upload Speed (Mbps) | Rating |
| Cool Ideas | 6 | 18.451 | 11.224 | 4.06 |
| RSAWEB | 7 | 13.655 | 10.213 | 3.60 |
| Afrihost | 13 | 10.094 | 9.112 | 3.59 |
| Supersonic | 8 | 18.784 | 18.965 | 3.50 |
| Vodacom | 32 | 10.656 | 8.003 | 3.47 |
| MTN | 43 | 15.478 | 10.992 | 3.47 |
| Vox | 19 | 13.086 | 9.952 | 3.46 |
| Webafrica | 7 | 18.295 | 10.258 | 3.34 |
| Axxess | 23 | 7.801 | 3.510 | 3.25 |
| Internet Solutions | 45 | 7.931 | 5.628 | 3.23 |
| MWEB | 16 | 9.586 | 4.892 | 3.06 |
| Liquid Telecom | 40 | 5.028 | 4.649 | 3.04 |
| Cell C | 30 | 12.022 | 9.802 | 2.82 |
| HeroTel | 43 | 4.850 | 2.068 | 2.79 |
| Rain | 39 | 3.235 | 4.295 | 2.62 |
| Telkom | 34 | 5.809 | 1.690 | 2.55 |