VoIP trends and statistics in South Africa for 2026

South Africa’s telecoms market: the numbers

The headline story is simple: fixed-line voice keeps shrinking while fibre and mobile data carry more of the load. These figures come from ICASA’s State of the ICT Sector Report (March 2026), which covers the 2025 financial year.

The pattern is consistent across every line: money and traffic are draining out of legacy fixed-line voice and flowing into fibre. Telkom has wound its copper ADSL base down from more than a million lines in 2015 to a residual rump, and the businesses leaving copper are landing on internet-based calling. That gap is exactly what VoIP fills.

Fibre is reshaping how the country connects

VoIP rides on a good internet connection, and South Africa now has far more of them than it did even a year ago.

Fibre-to-the-home and business (FTTH/B) subscriptions grew about 22% during 2025 to roughly 3.01 million active connections, with fibre networks now passing in the region of 5.4 million homes, meaning about 28% of households can get fibre where they live. The largest open-access operators, Vumatel and Openserve among them, keep extending footprint into more suburbs and estates each quarter. For a business choosing a phone system, this matters in one practical way: the better and more widespread the underlying connection, the more reliable VoIP becomes, which is why adoption tracks the fibre rollout so closely.

The global VoIP market, in context

South Africa’s shift mirrors a worldwide one, though the exact size of the global market depends on who you ask.

Industry research houses put the global VoIP market in the low hundreds of billions of dollars by 2026, growing at a low-double-digit annual rate. The estimates vary widely between firms because they define the market differently, so the useful takeaway is the direction, not a single number: VoIP is a large, still-expanding global category, driven by cheaper broadband, remote and hybrid work, and the steady retirement of legacy phone lines. South Africa is firmly inside that trend rather than an exception to it.

Key VoIP trends in South Africa for 2026

Six shifts are shaping how South African businesses buy and use voice this year.

Challenges facing VoIP in South Africa

Growth is real, but so are the friction points buyers should plan around.

Power and connectivity continuity. National load shedding eased through early 2026, but localised outages, cable theft and fibre faults still interrupt service. VoIP depends on power and internet, so resilience (a UPS on the router and switch, plus a mobile-app failover) has become part of the buying decision rather than an afterthought.

Internet quality outside the metros. Fibre coverage is concentrated in urban areas. Rural and peri-urban businesses may rely on fixed-wireless or LTE, where careful provider choice and a quality-of-service setup matter more for clear calls.

Cybersecurity and toll fraud. As phone systems move to the cloud, they become a target. Account hijacking to dial premium-rate numbers is a recurring threat, which is why spend caps, international-dialling controls and fraud monitoring belong in any deployment.

Number porting delays. Keeping your existing number when you switch is a legal right under ICASA’s porting rules, but the process can still run slower than buyers expect, so plan the cut-over rather than leaving it to the last day.

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