South Africa’s fastest broadband neighbourhoods — with a Pretoria surprise

The latest Analytico research shows that Garsfontein had the fastest average fixed-broadband download speed at the start of 2023.

The results are based on almost 200,000 tests done on the MyBroadband Speedtest app since 1 January 2023.

MyBroadband’s speed test servers are hosted in Teraco’s vendor-neutral data centres, guaranteeing a neutral testing environment for consumers to test their connections.

Through NAPAfrica, network operators have a free 10Gbps connection to MyBroadband’s speed test platform at its peering points.

The top 3 areas are all in Pretoria, which is unusual, as Johannesburg usually has a few of the top scorers.

Protea Hoogte is also an anomaly, as it is the only top neighbourhood with an average upload speed higher than the average download speed.

This can indicate mostly symmetrical fibre connections in the area and possibly some download congestion.

The fastest areas all have download speeds that average close to 50 Mbps — a popular entry-level fibre speed.

Recent pricing changes and promotions by large FNOs such as Metrofibre and Openserve may push these speeds up, as both have recently increased the bitrates of their cheaper packages.

This could cause the top neighbourhoods to have significantly faster speeds in the future, although Internet service providers have raised concerns about forced speed upgrades.

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