Your Next Checkers Trip Could Include Buying Uncapped Fibre Internet
You can now pick up fibre internet where you buy milk, bread, and washing powder. This sounds absurd until you remember how many households are locked out by bank account requirements, debit orders, and the usual contract nonsense that comes with home internet.
Fibertime’s new deal with the Shoprite Group puts prepaid fibre vouchers into Checkers and Shoprite stores nationwide. The pitch is plain: buy access at the till, load it when you need it, and skip the usual paperwork that makes fixed-line internet feel like a loan application.
What the vouchers buy
The headline number is up to 100Mbps on an uncapped fibre service. This speed moves a household out of “barely usable” territory and into something people can actually live with, whether they are streaming, working from home, studying, or trying to stop a WhatsApp call from sounding like it was routed through a tin can.
Pricing is built around short, prepaid bursts rather than a monthly bill that keeps arriving whether you used the line or not.
- R5 for one day on one device
- R120 for 30 days on one device
- R15 for one day for up to five devices
- R200 for 30 days for up to five devices
The family option is the smarter buy for anyone with a couple of phones, a laptop, and a smart TV all fighting for the same connection. The single-device offer, by contrast, aims at people who want home internet on and off, or need a cheap fallback during a tight month.
Why the supermarket channel changes the game
Selling fibre through a grocery chain does more than widen distribution; it changes the mental model. Internet access stops looking like a formal utility tied to banking infrastructure and starts looking like something you top up the same way you would airtime, electricity, or prepaid data.
This matters for people who live on cash, people without a bank account, and people who simply do not want another debit order landing on payday. It also removes the friction that comes with long contracts and cancellation fees. If you only need internet for part of the month, or are trying to keep a lid on spend, prepaid is cleaner than being trapped in a fixed contract because someone in a sales centre told you it was the “best option”.
Fibertime is also taking a major retail route before smaller partnerships even enter the picture. Shoprite Group is its first big voucher partner, and the company says more retail deals are on the way in the coming months. This suggests a serious attempt to make fibre part of ordinary retail behaviour, not a one-off experiment tucked beside the gift cards.
Who this is for
The obvious audience is mobile-first households that already do most things through a phone but still need proper home connectivity when the budget allows. This includes people who run their lives on prepaid services and only want to pay when the connection is actually useful.
It also suits households that have been priced or boxed out by traditional fibre. If you have ever had to choose between a fixed monthly internet bill and something more immediate, prepaid wins on control. You know the spend upfront. You can buy a day, a month, or a family bundle. You can stop when you want to stop.
There is always a trade-off. This is not magic fibre appearing where no line exists. The voucher sits on top of a fibre connection that already has to be in place. The model solves the payment problem and the commitment problem, not the infrastructure problem.
The growth tells its own story
Fibertime would not be pushing this model through a retailer of this size if demand was tiny. The company says it went from about 10,000 connected homes in early 2024 to more than 416,000 homes by April 2026. Active users are said to have reached nearly 1.25 million in the same period.
That is a very sharp climb for a service betting on convenience and lower commitment. Fibertime is now aiming for 500,000 connected households and 1.5 million active users. These targets are not modest, and they suggest the company sees prepaid fibre as more than a budget workaround. It sees it as the path to scale.
The reasoning is easy to follow. A service that can be bought without a bank account, without a debit order, and without a contract is simply easier to say yes to. Plenty of households will still prefer traditional fibre deals with steady monthly pricing. Plenty more will not. This model is built for the second group.
What to watch next
The real test is whether this stays convenient once more retailers come on board. If vouchers remain easy to find, easy to redeem, and easy to understand, Fibertime could shift fibre from a specialist household purchase into something far more ordinary.
That would be a proper change in how internet gets bought, not just how it gets advertised. For a market where prepaid habits already shape mobile use, that is a very natural move. Fibre has spent years acting like a service for people who can tolerate admin. Checkers and Shoprite are now helping turn it into something you can add to the basket.
