Call the current age of doing business what you will, but no one can deny that connectivity has become one of, if not the most important parts of doing business.

It’s answering questions on social media fast enough for Facebook to give you a certain ranking. It’s about making calls all day with a clear connection. It’s about having the speed and capacity to send and receive large files when leaving your PC to work for a few hours just isn’t an option.

ISPs

For our survey, the top spot for internet service providers went to Telkom with 25,2% of the vote.

This may come as a shock as Telkom has some notoriety for outages, long wait times and general lethargy when it comes to dealing with consumer problems.

Love them or hate them, Telkom offers one thing no other ISP can: coverage. No matter where you set up your business in South Africa, it’s likely that Telkom can offer you great service. It may not be the perfect price or speed, but Telkom can provide an invaluable internet connection in places where you wouldn’t think it possible.

Telkom has also marketed heavily and has such a history in telecoms that many may think that it’s the only game in town when it comes to getting connected.

Coming in second in this category is Afrihost with 16,8% of the vote, and Vodacom took 3rd spot with 15,1%. We’re glad to see the relatively smaller players having chipping at the parastatal behemoth that is Telkom. This should be an interesting sector to watch in 2018.

Cellular Providers

For cellular providers, Vodacom pops up again, but this time in first place with a huge 38,7%. Like Telkom, we believe that Vodacom has done such a great job in selling themselves to the consumer, that they become the simple choice for many people.

They also have very solid coverage and the extras they sometimes provide for new and renewed contracts (like copies of Microsoft Office Suite and online learning courses) only sweeten the deal.

Telkom did put up a good fight, however, with a second place finish and 26,1% of the vote. Telkom’s mobile offerings have always been seen as the second fiddle to their home and business internet, but getting all your services from one provider can be a convenient solution, especially when you’re dealing with dozens or even hundreds of service contracts for your company.

Third position goes to big yellow, MTN, making a solid showing with 19,3%.