Herotel has become South Africa’s largest retail fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) internet service provider by connected homes, according to the latest Africa Analysis FTTH Quarter Tracking report.
The Stellenbosch-based ISP, which is owned by Vumatel, said it had 284 850 connected FTTH homes at the latest count — ahead of other vertically integrated retail ISPs in the market. The figure excludes the company’s fixed-wireless customer base, which stands at 52 094.
The “largest ISP” claim places Herotel at the top of the rankings for South African retail ISPs that own and operate their own access network end to end. It is not a measure of total fibre network coverage nor a measure of total broadband customers across all access types, where multi-FNO retail ISPs such as Afrihost compete in a different segment.
What is interesting is where Herotel has been adding subscribers. The company has built a closed-access fibre and wireless business by targeting smaller towns, peri-urban areas and townships rather than the established metro suburbs that drove the first decade of South African fibre growth.
It now has more than 350 000 active customers across more than 550 towns, with over 612 000 homes ready for connection. Its prepaid fibre product, which lets users top up like airtime rather than signing a long-term contract, has helped it acquire customers in segments that contract-based fibre providers struggle to reach.
Township push
In some township areas it has already entered — including Jouberton, Kanana and Siyabuswa — Herotel says customers are consuming more than 1TB of data a month at an effective cost of less than 50c/GB. The company is targeting an additional 750 000 homes in township communities, aiming to expand its footprint to more than 1.1 million homes reaching approximately six million people.
That township push puts Herotel into direct competition with Fibertime, the pay-as-you-go fibre roll-out founded by former Herotel co-founder Alan Knott-Craig Jr after his 2022 exit. Fibertime has secured Nokia and Finnfund backing to deploy FTTH across 14 townships, with an additional 400 000-home expansion signed in October 2025.
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Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha said the real test was “whether people can afford to stay connected and use that connection for school, work, business, communication and entertainment without constantly managing data limits”. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
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