Netflix in South Africa: fastest ISPs revealed for September [Update]

Netflix launched in South Africa more than a year ago, officially supporting the region with TV shows and movies. But the streaming service has also recently added South Africa to its monthly ISP Speed Index.

Now, for the month of September, the service has revealed its top ten ISPs in the country. Fibre-based ISP CoolIdeas was in the top spot, at 3.80Mbps, followed by Vodacom and Vox Telecom (3.19Mbps each). MTN and Cell C rounded out the top five, at 3.18Mbps and 3.08Mbps respectively.

Check out the full rundown below.

“The Netflix ISP Speed Index lists the average prime time bitrate for Netflix content streamed to Netflix members during a particular month. For ‘Prime Time’, we calculate the average bitrate of Netflix content in megabits per second (Mbps) streamed by Netflix members per ISP,” the streaming service explains on its website.

We’ve asked the company whether the type of plan impacts on speed index data (e.g. if most customers are on a standard definition plan, will it result in a lower speed readout?). We’ll update the article when we get a response.

Update, 11 October 2017: Netflix says that the type of plan could have a small impact, but generally wouldn’t detract from being a measure of the consumer’s experience anyway.

“This actually has a small impact. If the subscriber mix in one ISP is significantly different from the others in the market, for example, as described with more SD plans and the rest is comparable, then we could see lower average speeds,” the firm’s Yann Lafargue told Memeburn. “We operate with the assumption that the plan mix is comparable between the ISPs. It does not change the fact the average we see is still a measure of the customers’ experience of Netflix on that particular network.”