Openserve fibre: coverage, deals and the cheapest ISPs (2026)

Openserve is probably the fibre network under more South African homes than any other, and most people have never said its name out loud. They call it “Telkom fibre.” Close enough — but if you understand what Openserve is, you can usually connect for less than the first price you are quoted.

What Openserve actually is

Openserve is Telkom’s wholesale, open-access fibre arm. Telkom carved its fibre out into a network business that lays and runs the line, then rents it to any ISP that wants to sell over it. So Openserve owns the cable in your street; the company that bills you every month — Afrihost, Webafrica, Cool Ideas, MWEB, RSAWEB, Vox — is a separate ISP riding that line.

It is also the biggest fibre network in the country, with more than 2.4 million homes passed and roughly half a million already connected. That scale is the whole point: Openserve reaches suburbs and small towns the newer networks simply have not built into yet, largely because it inherited Telkom’s decades-old footprint.

Where Openserve reaches

The metros are well covered — Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban all have large Openserve footprints. But its real edge is reach beyond the big cities: because it grew out of Telkom’s copper network, Openserve often shows up in towns where Vumatel or Octotel haven’t arrived.

None of that guarantees your house, though. Fibre is built street by street, and Openserve’s own map shows the suburb, not whether the line has reached your gate. The only reliable answer is a check at your exact address — run it here and you’ll see whether Openserve is live for you, plus every other network that reaches you.

Speeds, and the 1Gbps arrival

For years Openserve topped out at 500 Mbps for home users while rivals pushed gigabit and beyond. That changed in 2026 with the rollout of a 1 Gbps home line, so the ceiling is finally lifting. Most households, though, will never need it — 50 to 100 Mbps runs a busy home comfortably.

Worth knowing: Openserve’s entry-level “Web Connect” line is unusually generous for a starter product — a free Wi-Fi router, free installation, and no contract, aimed at getting people onto fibre cheaply. Higher up, several tiers are symmetrical, meaning your upload matches your download, which helps if you back up to the cloud or live on video calls.

Openserve deals: who sells it cheapest

Here’s the part the ISPs would rather you skip. Because they all rent the same Openserve line, the difference between them at a given speed is mostly margin and promos — so the same 100 Mbps can cost noticeably more from one ISP than the next. These are the lowest prices we were tracking across the ISPs that sell Openserve at the time of writing:

Prices move around and promos come and go, so treat those as a guide, not gospel — always confirm the live price before you sign. The point is the spread: shopping the ISP, not just the network, is the easiest saving on the table. Our Openserve network page shows the current cheapest per speed, and the fibre deals page ranks every ISP by real monthly price.

Openserve vs the other networks

Openserve’s pitch is reach and stability rather than the flashiest speeds. Vumatel tends to be denser in the metros and pushed multi-gig earlier; Octotel dominates the Cape Peninsula; Frogfoot has a wide, reliable national spread. If more than one is live at your address, the choice usually comes down to price at the speed you want and the ISP’s service record. We line them up side by side in SA fibre networks compared.