South Africa’s digital landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, moving from a paradigm of data scarcity to one of unprecedented abundance. This transformation is vividly illustrated by the emergence of a new class of ‘power user,’ with one fibre customer of ISP Axxess consuming a staggering 1.023 petabytes (over one million gigabytes) of data in a single year. This isn’t merely an outlier; it’s a leading indicator of a nationwide surge in internet traffic, driven by infrastructure evolution and changing user behaviour.
The backbone of this data revolution is the country’s robust internet exchange ecosystem. NAPAfrica, the continent’s largest exchange point, hit a peak of six terabits per second (Tbps) in late 2025. This critical infrastructure, where hundreds of networks interconnect locally, is the unsung hero of the modern South African internet. By keeping traffic within the country’s borders—a process known as peering—it slashes latency for services like streaming and gaming, reduces costs for ISPs, and alleviates strain on expensive international bandwidth links. This localisation of traffic is a key enabler for the massive data consumption we now see.
| FNO | Download speed | Data consumed (December 2024 to November 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Frogfoot | 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) | 1,023TB (1,023,000GB) |
| Openserve | 500Mbps | 869TB (869,000GB) |
| Vumatel | 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) | 643TB (643,000GB) |
| Link Layer | 500Mbps | 634TB (634,000GB) |
| MetroFibre | 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) | 613TB (613,000GB) |
The primary catalyst is the aggressive rollout of affordable, uncapped Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) services. Where once users meticulously managed capped ADSL or mobile data, gigabit-speed fibre connections have unleashed a ‘buffet mentality.’ As Franco Barbalich, founder of Axxess, notes, growth is fuelled by both higher line speeds and a rapidly expanding customer base. This has created the conditions for extreme usage cases.
To truly grasp the scale, let’s deconstruct the top user’s 1.023 petabyte year:
- Per Day: ~2,803 GB – enough to stream 4K video for over 230 hours.
- Per Hour: ~116 GB – equivalent to downloading over 15 high-fidelity PC games.
- Per Minute: ~1.94 GB – more data than the average South African mobile user consumed in an entire month just a few years ago.
This user’s annual consumption equals over 12,785 downloads of a massive title like ‘Battlefield 6.’ They are not alone; Axxess’s data reveals four other customers consuming between 600 and 869 terabytes annually, indicating a growing cohort of hyper-connected households.
Video still king — but piracy could be making a comeback
What’s Driving This Consumption? The traffic mix tells a nuanced story. While video streaming (YouTube, Netflix, etc.) remains dominant, its proportional share is decreasing as other activities grow. The rise of QUIC (a modern transport protocol used by Chrome, YouTube, and major apps) and traffic to iCloud and Amazon Web Services points to heavy use of cloud backups, syncing, and software-as-a-service platforms. A notable, and telling, trend is the doubling of traffic from the BitTorrent protocol (from 3% to 7%). This often signals increased downloading of very large files, such as 4K/8K media libraries, software, and games—activities only feasible with truly uncapped, high-speed connections.
The Road to Multi-Gigabit Futures: The petabyte user today is a precursor to mainstream demand tomorrow. The infrastructure is already advancing to meet it. In November 2025, Octotel became the first Fibre Network Operator (FNO) to offer consumer packages up to 10Gbps. Frogfoot has announced similar plans. This leap beyond 1Gbps is not just about faster movie downloads; it’s about future-proofing homes for technologies like:
- Volumetric Data & AI: Seamless use of cloud-based AI assistants, real-time language models, and processing of large 3D/VR datasets.
- Hyper-Connected Homes: Dozens of 4K/8K security cameras, smart devices, and simultaneous streams across multiple households (e.g., granny flats).
- Prosumer Activity: Home creators uploading raw video footage to the cloud, running personal servers, or participating in distributed computing projects.
Looking ahead, growth will be exponential and multi-faceted. Fibre rollouts and mobile network upgrades (like 5G) will deepen penetration. Crucially, technologies like direct-to-cell satellite internet (e.g., from Starlink) promise to bridge the digital divide in remote areas, bringing new populations online and adding to the national data footprint. The story of South Africa’s top data user is more than a curiosity; it’s a data point on the curve of a nation’s rapid digital acceleration, signalling the end of data as a limited commodity and the dawn of connectivity as a truly unlimited utility.