Openserve hiking fibre prices

Fibre network operator (FNO) Openserve is increasing the wholesale prices of its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) packages from 1 April 2024.

MyBroadband first learnt of the price hikes after Internet service provider (ISP) Axxess sent customers emails notifying them of price changes on their Openserve packages.

“Openserve has informed us that they will be increasing their fibre pricing, so we will simply be passing this increase on to you,” Axxess said.

Two other major fibre ISPs — Cool Ideas and RSAWeb — subsequently confirmed to MyBroadband that they also received communication from Openserve about the price increases.

Cool Ideas will be sending its updated Openserve pricing on Friday, 1 March 2024.

RSAWeb said it was also in the process of communicating the changes to existing customers and updating its advertised pricing.

Openserve’s annual price adjustments for FTTH are typically implemented in April, coinciding with the start of its financial year.

ISPs will have varying price adjustments

It is important to note that customers with other ISPs won’t necessarily see changes in their pricing.

When FNOs adjust their wholesale prices, ISPs can either choose to pass the hike on to customers or absorb them and keep prices the same.

However, the latter will result in a lower profit margin for the ISP, something which many cannot afford to do.

For Axxess customers, prices will increase by R30, R50, or R70, working out to hikes of 4.9% to 8%, depending on the package.

The smallest increase is on the top-end 500/250Mbps package, while the biggest increase is on the 100/100Mbps product.

The table below shows Axxesss’s current and new FTTH pricing on Openserve’s network.

Openserve is not the first FNO to adjust its prices in 2024.

Frogfoot updated its speed structure and increased prices on several of its packages at the start of February 2024.

It followed MetroFibre overhauling its FTTH package structure in November 2023.

The last few years have seen the effective prices of fibre come down substantially, at least when it comes to the cost per megabit-per-second (Mbps).

However, in feedback provided to MyBroadband towards the end of 2023, many of the country’s major FTTH FNOs said customers should not expect fibre price reductions in 2024.

Update — Openserve confirms increases

Following the publication of this article, Openserve confirmed the price increases to MyBroadband.

“On 1 April 2024, Openserve will introduce new wholesale pricing aligned to the increased speeds implemented last year,” the company said.

“The wholesale prices are confidential and only shared directly with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners.”