Ask a room of South African gamers or work-from-home diehards who their ISP is and a surprising number will say Cool Ideas, usually unprompted and with a bit of evangelism. For a mid-sized provider up against Afrihost and Webafrica’s marketing budgets, that word-of-mouth is telling. Here is what earns it — and where it slips.
Who Cool Ideas is
Cool Ideas is a mid-sized, fibre-focused ISP that resells across most of the big open-access networks — Vumatel, Openserve, Octotel, MetroFibre and more — plus a fixed-wireless 5G option. It doesn’t own any infrastructure; its whole reputation rests on how well it runs the connection you buy, and that turns out to be the interesting part.
The speed reputation is real
This is Cool Ideas’ calling card: it consistently finishes at or near the top of MyBroadband’s independent speed-test rankings — peering, latency and raw throughput — and it’s a repeat favourite for gaming thanks to direct peering into Steam, Riot, Blizzard and the console networks. If low ping and full speed at 8pm on a weeknight matter to you, this is exactly the crowd Cool Ideas built for.
The technical reason is boring but important: low contention and good peering. Plenty of ISPs sell you "100 Mbps" and then let the line sag under load. Cool Ideas’ reputation is that the number on the box is roughly the number you get, even at peak.
Packages and prices
Pricing is competitive and refreshingly plain — month-to-month, a router included, no lock-in. Entry lines start around R229, and here’s roughly where the popular speeds land (cheapest we were tracking, and it depends on the network at your address):
| Speed | From /mo |
|---|---|
| 50 Mbps | R559 |
| 100 Mbps | R699 |
| 200 Mbps | R799 |
| 1 Gbps | from ~R834 on some networks |
That gigabit price, where it’s available, is genuinely sharp — worth a look if your address is on the right network. Confirm the current figure before ordering; fibre pricing moves.
The catches
It’s not all glowing. The public review picture is mixed: Cool Ideas rates well on HelloPeter but sits around 3.5 on Google across thousands of reviews, and the recurring gripes are billing hiccups and communication during outages rather than the connection itself. In other words, the fibre is great; the admin can wobble. For a lot of people that’s a fine trade, but it’s worth knowing going in.
The other limiter is coverage: Cool Ideas can only sell you a line where one of its partner networks is live, and it isn’t on every FNO. So the first question is still whether it can reach you at all.
The verdict
If you care about speed that holds up under load — gaming, big downloads, a house full of streams — Cool Ideas earns its fans, and the no-contract terms mean you can leave if it disappoints. If your priority is the absolute lowest price or hand-holding support, shop it against the others on your line first. You can see its live customer ratings on our Cool Ideas provider page.
Check your address to see whether Cool Ideas can reach you, then compare it against every other ISP on your line by real monthly price and rating — our fibre deals page ranks them for you.