Fibre vs LTE vs 5G for Business — Honest 2026 South African Comparison

The one-paragraph verdict

For any South African business that takes calls, hosts meetings or relies on cloud apps: business fibre as primary, LTE or 5G as automatic failover, on different providers. Wireless-only is acceptable for very small teams or where fibre genuinely isn't available. Never rely on a single link — the money you save is dwarfed by one bad day.

Business fibre — the default primary

• Typical speeds: 100/100, 200/200, 500/500, 1000/1000 Mbps symmetrical.
• Rand pricing (2026): R1,100–R2,500/mo for 100 Mbps symmetric business; R2,500–R5,500/mo for 500 Mbps.
• Latency: 2–15 ms to JHB/CT peering — the best available in SA.
• Uptime SLA: 99.5–99.9%, 4-hour MTTR from Openserve/Vumatel Business/MetroFibre/Frogfoot/Octotel.
• Install: 5–20 working days if fibre is already at the pavement; 4–12 weeks if a build is required.
• Best for: every business location that plans to be there longer than 12 months.

What to check before signing: SLA in writing, static IP included, upstream ISP (not just the FNO), whether the ISP has real out-of-hours support, and — critically — whether a second fibre path exists to your building.

LTE — reliable, unglamorous failover

• Typical speeds: 20–80 Mbps down, 5–25 Mbps up in good coverage.
• Rand pricing: R400–R900/mo for uncapped business LTE (Vodacom, MTN, Rain).
• Latency: 25–60 ms — fine for browsing, cloud apps, VoIP with QoS. Not great for live streaming.
• Uptime: 98.5–99.5% — degrades in bad weather and during extended load-shedding at the tower.
• Best for: failover, temporary sites, remote workers, retail branches where fibre economics don't work.

Use an external directional antenna if signal in the office is below -95 dBm — it typically doubles usable throughput.

5G — genuinely competitive, coverage-dependent

• Typical speeds: 200–600 Mbps down, 40–120 Mbps up in strong coverage; drops to LTE-class in weak coverage.
• Rand pricing: R800–R1,600/mo uncapped (Rain 5G, Vodacom 5G, MTN 5G).
• Latency: 15–35 ms — approaching fibre.
• Uptime: similar to LTE. It's a shared radio medium, so peak-time contention still applies.
• Best for: new offices while waiting for fibre installation, secondary link on high-bandwidth sites, remote/rural offices with 5G coverage but no fibre.

Verify actual coverage AT your building (not the ISP's map) using a trial SIM for 7 days before committing. Coverage varies by floor and window direction.

How to combine them — the 1ICT default stack

1. Primary: Business fibre, 100–500 Mbps symmetric, with SLA.
2. Failover: LTE or 5G on a different mobile network (if fibre is on Openserve → LTE on MTN or Vodacom; not the same last-mile).
3. Router: Dual-WAN device (MikroTik hEX/RB5009, Peplink Balance, Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE) with automatic failover and load-balanced VoIP.
4. Power: UPS/inverter sized for the router, switch, VoIP handsets and Wi-Fi APs — minimum 4 hours autonomy for stage-6 realities.
5. Monitoring: both links continuously pinged; the MSP is alerted the moment either drops, not when the user complains.

This stack costs roughly R2,500–R6,000/mo depending on speeds and typically delivers 99.95%+ effective uptime — better than any single link on its own.

Frequently asked questions