Internet connectivity in the home has become a necessity for modern life.
Thirty years ago you wouldn’t have considered having a home without a landline.
Twenty years ago you wouldn’t have been a real “grown-up” without your own cell phone (as in, the Nokia brick we all carried around, where the greatest features were the torch and the alarm clock, and of course, snake).
Ten years ago internet access became as essential to your daily life as any of these things. There’s not much you can do without an Email address, and having at least some form of internet access at home has been fairly standard for some time.
Today, the “New Normal” is internet that works at “the speed of thought”.
As South African’s we are used to things getting to us a little after the fact, so it’s no surprise that while Fibre has been available here for over a decade, it’s only been in the last two years that we have seen it become household standard.
Currently, it’s still only really our city dwellers (and bigger towns) who have easy access to Fibre internet, but the Fibre map is growing fast, and more and more areas are going Fibre Live every week.
Choosing an Internet Connection:
What you need to know
Fibre is the fastest and most reliable connection. Hands down.
Fibre makes use of Fibre-optic cables which are installed in your home. They work by emitting and receiving a light signal through the cables that represents binary code. Light = 1, no light = 0. The long and short of it: Fibre has the capacity to work at the speed of light. Fibre is the best option available in South Africa and your providers are going to a lot of trouble to make sure it works flawlessly. You can achieve speeds of up to 200Mbps!
LTE is not as fast as Fibre, but it moves house more easily.
LTE at Home can achieve speeds of up to 50Mbps. It’s not quite as fast as Fibre, and because it’s airborne, a little more prone to external factors such as bad weather playing a part in the speeds you get. That said, it’s still worlds faster than ADSL and far more reliable. What we love about LTE is that it’s fairly mobile. If you are moving house soon, or you need to take your internet with you on holiday, LTE is the way to go. It’s also handy if your landlord doesn’t want you installing Fibre lines – because it’s completely wireless, from the tower to you.
We recommend LTE to customers who are waiting for Fibre to reach their area, or waiting to move into a new home before signing up for Fibre. Because Webafrica doesn’t do contracts, all you have to do is return your router in its original box, and you can swap right over to Fibre!
ADSL is the slowest, but it’s available in more outlying areas than any other form of internet.
Here’s how it is: ADSL is not the fastest, and it’s not the most reliable, but is available pretty much anywhere that you can get a Telkom voice line. With the introduction of the newer technologies taking up most of our infrastructure providers time, we don’t know that they will improve on the ADSL infrastructure any time soon.
However! If you are in a remote area where Fibre won’t be arriving for a while and LTE isn’t an option, Old School ADSL is still cool, and with Webafrica dealing with Telkom on your behalf, it’s even cooler.
Dial up is from the dark ages. Please, please don’t get dial up.
You can download a full comparison of our services here.
Regardless of what you choose, Webafrica is with you all the way. If you’re not sure what the best option is in your area, pop over to our home page and enter your street address, we will quickly find the fastest connection in your street!
