Fastest fixed internet providers in South Africa revealed for Q4 2021

The latest results for the fastest and best performing fixed internet providers for Q4 2021 have been revealed in Ookla’s new Internet Performance Report.

The results are based on data from Speedtest, with rankings based on median scores achieved by providers.

Ookla’s report also provided performance rankings in latency and consistency.

So what did the report show?

Fastest fixed internet provider

Cool Ideas topped the speed rankings again, with a Speed Score of 54.46. This is a slight improvement on its score of 53.85 in the previous quarter.

The ISP has dominated the speed rankings throughout the year, taking first place in every quarter.

It’s followed by Afrihost in second place for Q4, and then Web Africa.

You can see the rankings of ISPs according to their speed scores below:

1. Cool Ideas: 54.46
2. Afrihost: 44.27
3. Webafrica: 43.21
4. Axxess: 41.94
5. Vox Telecom: 38.40
6. Rain: 34.20
7. Mweb: 30.95
8. Telkom: 23.74
9. HeroTel: 20.18

Internet provider with the best latency in South Africa

So how did local ISPs perform when it came to latency scores in Q4?

Webafrica and Cool Ideas tied in first place for the lowest latency, with both having a median latency of 4ms.

Up next were Afrihost and Vox Telecom, with a median latency of 5ms.

Rain had the worst latency of the providers ranked, with a median latency of 24ms.

You can see the rankings below:

Best consistency for internet providers in South Africa

The Ookla report also ranked fixed internet providers for their consistency.

“In measuring the consistency of each fixed broadband provider’s performance, we found that Cool Ideas had the highest Consistency Score in South Africa during Q4 2021, with 73.0% of results showing at least a 25 Mbps minimum download speed and 3 Mbps minimum upload speed,” the company noted in its report.

The ISP has achieved first place in this ranking category since it was introduced in Q2 2021.

Part of the ISP’s high consistency in speeds is likely due to the fact that it’s a fibre-only network that also offers only unshaped and unthrottled plans.

This means its network is not as vulnerable to adverse weather conditions as networks that integrate wireless technologies. It also does not artificially lower the speeds of customers who have used a certain amount of data.

For the Q4 rankings, it’s followed by Webafrica, with a consistency score of 66.1%. Afrihost places third with a score of 64.9%.

You can see the consistency score rankings below:

1. Cool Ideas: 73%
2. Webafrica: 66.1%
3. Afrihost: 64.9%
4. Vox Telecom: 63.6%
5. Axxess: 59.6%
6. Mweb: 50.8%
7. Herotel: 43.3%
8. Telkom: 42.7%
9. Rain: 39.3%

You can explore the full rankings on the Speedtest site.

Read more: No fibre internet in your area? Fibre alternatives that you can try

Feature image: Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash