Herotel has officially moved to the front of South Africa’s retail fibre market, becoming the country’s largest retail fibre-to-the-home provider by connected homes, according to the latest Africa Analysis FTTH Quarter Tracking report. For a sector that has long been dominated by metro-led roll-outs and heavyweight brands, this marks a notable shift in where growth is happening and who is capturing it.
The Stellenbosch-based operator, which is owned by Vumatel, said it now serves 284,850 connected FTTH homes. That puts Herotel ahead of other vertically integrated retail internet service providers that own and run their access networks from end to end. The company’s fixed-wireless base of 52,094 customers was not included in that ranking, meaning the headline number reflects fibre only.
This is an important distinction in a market that often gets blurred by competing definitions. Herotel’s claim to being the largest ISP is not about total broadband customers across every access type, nor does it mean it has the broadest fibre footprint in the country. Rather, it speaks to the number of homes actively connected on its own fibre network, which is the metric the industry report used.
What makes the story more interesting is where Herotel has built its business. Instead of following the traditional fibre playbook of focusing heavily on affluent suburbs in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, the company has pushed into smaller towns, peri-urban communities and townships. That strategy has helped it carve out a very different market position, and one that is now paying off in subscriber growth.
Herotel says it has grown to more than 350,000 active customers across more than 550 towns, with 612,000 homes ready for connection. Those numbers point to a network that has scaled far beyond the narrow image many South Africans still have of fibre as an urban premium product. In Herotel’s case, the company is clearly betting that the next wave of digital growth will come from underserviced areas rather than the obvious big-city markets.
A major part of that expansion has been its prepaid fibre product, which allows customers to load data in a manner similar to airtime rather than locking into a conventional monthly contract. In South Africa, that matters. Many households still live month to month, and the ability to control spending more flexibly can be the difference between having home internet and doing without it.
The company’s own figures suggest the model is resonating. In township areas such as Jouberton, Kanana and Siyabuswa, Herotel says customers are using more than 1TB of data a month, at an effective cost of less than 50c per GB. Those are striking numbers in a country where affordability remains one of the biggest barriers to meaningful internet access.
The company is now aiming to connect a further 750,000 homes in township communities, with the longer-term goal of reaching more than 1.1 million homes and roughly six million people. If it succeeds, Herotel would not just remain a significant player in South African broadband — it would become one of the key operators shaping how lower-income and semi-urban communities get online.
Herotel’s fibre growth strategy is reshaping the South African broadband map
For the South African fibre sector, Herotel’s fibre growth strategy is a reminder that the next major battleground is not necessarily in the suburbs where fibre first took off. It is increasingly in communities where price sensitivity is high, but the need for reliable internet is just as urgent, if not more so. That includes school learners, small businesses, informal traders and families who depend on data for communication and entertainment.
The company’s township ambitions also place it in direct competition with Fibertime, the pay-as-you-go fibre operator founded by former Herotel co-founder Alan Knott-Craig Jr after his departure in 2022. Fibertime has gained traction with a similar affordability-first model and has backing from Nokia and Finnfund. It is currently deploying FTTH in 14 townships, with an additional 400,000-home expansion signed in October 2025.
That sets up a fascinating contest between two operators chasing the same broad market: households that want fibre-level performance but cannot afford traditional contract pricing. In that sense, the competition is less about speed for speed’s sake and more about who can build a sustainable model that keeps people connected without forcing them into rigid billing structures.
Herotel’s rise also fits into a broader shift in the local market, where infrastructure ownership and retail distribution are becoming more tightly linked. Vertically integrated operators often have an advantage because they can control roll-out, pricing, customer experience and network planning under one roof. But that advantage only goes so far if the company cannot find the right segments to grow in. Herotel appears to have done exactly that by going after towns and communities that many competitors overlooked.
For households in these areas, the implications are practical rather than abstract. Fibre no longer has to mean high monthly commitments, installation hurdles or urban exclusivity. A prepaid model, especially one that delivers real usage at a lower effective cost, can make home internet feel more like a utility than a luxury. That is a major shift in a market still wrestling with affordability and access gaps.
Speaking to the broader meaning of the milestone, Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha said the real issue is not just whether people can get connected, but whether they can remain connected in a way that supports daily life. As he put it, the real test is whether people can afford to stay connected and use that connection for school, work, business, communication and entertainment without constantly managing data limits.
That comment cuts to the heart of South Africa’s broadband challenge. Connection statistics matter, but so does real-world usage. A network is only valuable if households can keep using it consistently, without having to ration every megabyte.
As we reported earlier, Herotel’s latest numbers show that the fibre market is no longer being shaped only by the biggest metros or the most obvious consumer segments. Herotel has become South Africa’s largest retail FTTH ISP by connected homes, and that title reflects a deliberate strategy built on reach, affordability and township expansion. The next phase of the fight will be about whether that growth can be sustained — and whether the rest of the market can keep up.