The backbone of South Africa’s fixed-line and fibre infrastructure
Openserve is the wholesale division of Telkom, responsible for managing one of the country’s largest communication networks.
It operates the national copper and fibre infrastructure, connecting millions of homes and businesses, and provides network access to retail internet service providers (ISPs) such as Telkom, MWEB, Afrihost, and Webafrica.
Openserve’s role is to maintain and upgrade physical connections while ISPs handle end-customer billing and support.
Why you might experience an Openserve-related outage
Because Openserve only operates as a wholesale infrastructure provider, end users cannot contact them directly for retail service faults. Instead, your ISP escalates the problem to Openserve when a fault is confirmed on the physical network.
Typical issues include:
- Copper theft or damage in older ADSL areas
- Fibre line breaks caused by construction or environmental factors
- Scheduled maintenance or upgrades in your neighbourhood
- Power or backhaul failures affecting regional nodes
Openserve continuously upgrades its copper-to-fibre migration projects to improve reliability, but copper regions remain more vulnerable to disruption.
How to check status and report problems
If your internet or fixed phone service stops working:
- 🧭 Check if your ISP reports an Openserve fault on their portal (Telkom, MWEB, or Webafrica usually provide updates).
- 🧑💻 Visit the official page → Openserve Fibre Support
- 📞 Contact your ISP’s technical line and ask for your Openserve fault reference number once the issue is logged.
- 🔧 Monitor your ticket via your ISP’s dashboard — Openserve provides live status and restoration times to them directly.
For new installations or line migrations, Openserve also offers a live service tracker on its website, allowing customers to check progress on orders and repairs.
From 310 to around 620 smart power backup sites in two years
Openserve deployed smart power backup technology at 310 of its sites in 2023 and announced a plan to double that footprint in 2024, taking the total to around 620 sites. These backups are concentrated at the most critical nodes of the network: exchanges, central offices and the distribution points that feed fibre cabinets in residential streets. The aim is to keep the fixed network running through several consecutive load shedding blocks without resorting to diesel.
Openserve is Telkom's wholesale arm and represents the bulk of the country's open-access fibre footprint, so its resilience choices affect dozens of ISPs that resell fibre on top of the same infrastructure. The smart backup programme is part of Telkom group's broader net-zero alignment, which targets carbon neutrality by 2035 and net zero by 2040.
Customer-side equipment (the white ONT box on the wall and the WiFi router) does not have any backup. When the power goes off at home, the fibre line itself can still be alive at the cabinet, but nothing at the address can receive it without a UPS. For a real-time view of outages reported by users across Openserve and other networks, see the South Africa power outage map. To check whether the cuts at your address are load shedding rather than a fibre fault, see the load shedding page.