Parow West - 22 October. Construction workers for Vumatel busy with the installation of fibre optic cables in Parow West. Picture: Ian Landsberg/ African News Agency (ANA) Parow West - 22 October. Construction workers for Vumatel busy with the installation of fibre optic cables in Parow West. Picture: Ian Landsberg/ African News Agency (ANA)
JOHANNESBURG - If you have a home fibre connection, your line speeds are about to be upgraded for free, after Vumatel announced that they are working with multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to increase customers speeds free of charge.
Vumatel said that it would upgrade the line speeds of existing customers on their fibre network from 1 April until 31 May 2020.
Vumatel CCO Simon Butler, said, "We have a responsibility to make it easier for people to stay connected as they navigate the next few weeks of working and learning from home."
Vumatel said that customers will be bumped up to the next line speed that is available to them. Customers who have a 1GBPS line speed will not get an increase.
10MBPS will be upgraded to 20MBPS
20MBPS will be upgraded to 50MBPS
50MBPS will be upgraded to 100MBPS
100MBPS will be upgraded to 200MBPS
200MBPS will be upgraded to 1GBPS
Vumatel said that they are in discussions with multiple ISPs to action the speed increases and further stated that ISPs with the capabilities to increase the speeds will do so.
According to MyBroadband, RSAWEB, Afrihost, Axxess, Webafrica, Cool Ideas, and MWEB confirmed that they would be offering these line speed upgrades to their customers from 1 April 2020.
MyBroadband further reported that fibre provider frogfoot is also in discussions with ISPs to increase the speeds. Frogfoot told the media company that they will atleast double the speeds of their existing home customers.