Written by Hannes De Kock, Regional Sales & Marketing Manager at HeroTel.
A common question we hear from people wanting to switch to us is “will there be a delay during my video calls?.” The reason for this is that a lot of internet companies have started selling packages with exceptionally low upload speeds, sometimes as slow as 1Mbps. And as anybody that has been on this kind of package knows, it really creates a terrible internet experience.
While the monthly prices on these packages are appealing, they create massive problems for people who are working from home and who also need to upload large work files. While everybody talks about download speeds it is really the upload speeds that ensure that video calls work the way they should.
This is also important for your family. As someone with my own family, I have first-hand experience with the heavy data consumption that comes with it. We have the additional need to do video calls with relatives staying more than 1000kms, as many people do. Children also need to learn online and upload school homework.
And if your child, or yourself, are gamers then upload speed is critical. You cannot do online gaming with anything less than a 50/50 line. Trust me on this one! Having a symmetrical connection means the data sent is just as fast as it is received making gaming as smooth as it should be. Upload speeds also affect streaming TV shows or movies, especially when different family members are all doing their own thing.
This is why Herotel only sells symmetrical monthly packages, which means that the download and upload speed is the same: because we know that customers will never have a good experience with slow upload speeds. The minimum you need for two people is 10Mbps download & upload, and 50Mbps for a large family.
Sourced from: HeroTel. View the original article here.
What This Means for SA Resellers
Upload speed is a topic that has become increasingly important in South Africa as cloud applications, video conferencing, and VoIP have shifted the bandwidth demands of typical business users. Historically, South African internet services were highly asymmetric — with download speeds far exceeding upload — which was appropriate when most users were primarily downloading content. Today, the typical South African office worker uploads constantly: sending emails with attachments, participating in Zoom or Teams calls (which are symmetric bandwidth consumers), uploading files to SharePoint or Google Drive, and pushing data to cloud-based ERP and CRM systems.
For SA resellers, upload speed is a consultative selling point that differentiates informed resellers from those who sell on download speed alone. When assessing a client’s connectivity requirements for a VoIP or UCaaS deployment, upload bandwidth is the critical constraint — a VoIP call requires symmetric bandwidth (typically 100Kbps per concurrent call for G.711), and a video call requires even more. A client with 100Mbps download but only 10Mbps upload will experience call quality problems during peak usage periods that are attributable to upload saturation, not download.
SA resellers should incorporate upload speed assessment into their pre-sales connectivity audits and ensure client connectivity contracts specify upload bandwidth explicitly — not just download. For clients running cloud-heavy operations (Office 365, Google Workspace, cloud ERP), or video-intensive environments (video conferencing, remote desktop, CCTV upload), recommend symmetric or near-symmetric fibre or Ethernet services from providers like Herotel, Vumatel, or OpenServe Business where these are available. The conversation about upload speed is also a natural gateway to discussing SD-WAN and bonded connectivity solutions for clients where upload-heavy usage patterns create reliability risks.
About the Author
Mechelle Gindra
Mechelle Gindra is the managing editor and lead content strategist at Telecoms-Channel, South Africa's dedicated intelligence platform for telecoms resellers, ICT distributors, and channel partners. She oversees the editorial team's AI-assisted content production pipeline, ensuring vendor news, market analysis, and regulatory updates are accurate, timely, and actionable for the SA telecoms channel community. With deep expertise in the South African telecoms reseller ecosystem, Mechelle directs coverage of vendor partner programmes, ICASA regulatory developments, wholesale market dynamics, and channel business strategy. She is responsible for maintaining Telecoms-Channel's editorial standards, fact-checking processes, and corrections policy.
