Here are your most popular options:

ADSL

Wired internet, also known as residential broadband, is when a physical cable or telephone line (ADSL) connects you to the internet.

If you already have a landline installed at your house or business, it would make sense to add ADSL to it.

Telephone lines stretch across South Africa, which means that ADSL is available in more outlying areas than any other form of internet.

You can have internet access no matter where you are!

Many ADSL packages are uncapped - a package at a fixed monthly price, but limited line speed which depends on the contract you buy - at reasonably low rates.

However, ADSL can be unreliable at times. It is influenced by congestion at peak times and environmental conditions affecting the network.

Unfortunately, ADSL is not nearly as fast as other Internet options.

Fibre

If data at the speed of light sounds good to you, fibre is a good option to consider.

Fibre makes use of fibre-optic cables which are installed in your neighbourhood.

Fibre promises speeds of up to 200Mbps, which means no more buffering or waiting forever for a page to refresh.

You can easily stream videos and play online games.

It is less influenced by environmental factors, so a thunderstorm should not affect your internet connectivity.

There is also much less peak time slowdown with fibre.

Unfortunately, if your neighbourhood does not have a fibre network, then you cannot tap into it.

The good news is that more and more fibre networks are being laid out – even in Zululand!

LTE

If fibre is not available in your area, LTE is a good alternative.

LTE is a 4G cellular signal that connects your device to the nearest mobile network tower.

A router distributes the LTE signal in the form of wi-fi to wi-fi enabled devices.

Being wireless and mobile, it means you can take the internet with you!

LTE works much faster than ADSL and is far more reliable, although it can still be influenced by external environmental factors.

It is not quite as fast as fibre, but you can still stream videos if you purchase a bigger data package.

Otherwise, LTE is perfect for moderate internet browsing and social media networking.