Which South African ISP Do AI Agents Recommend? Telkom vs Afrihost vs MWEB vs Webafrica

We ran an agent experience audit of Telkom, Afrihost, MWEB, and Webafrica in South Africa. Here's which one AI agents recommend, and why the AI's favorite pick doesn't always match the human reviews.

Ask an agent which fibre provider to sign up with in South Africa, and it names Afrihost most of the time, citing a real MyBroadband ISP of the Year award. Check Afrihost's own Trustpilot and HelloPeter pages, though, and its real customer sentiment is as bad as Telkom's, which every test in this audit, including the AI itself, ranks as the worst option.

Across 20 test runs, here are the results in summary:

• Afrihost is the agent's most consistent pick. It gets named unprompted most often and wins 4 of 5 head-to-head prompts outright or jointly, citing a real MyBroadband ISP of the Year award. Its own Trustpilot and HelloPeter scores tell a very different story.
• Webafrica wins 1 of 5 head-to-heads, on price and flexibility, and has a strong public review record to back it up.
• MWEB never comes out as the agent's outright top pick, consistently placing second or third, praised specifically for phone support.
• Telkom finishes last on Discovery and Sentiment. Agents rank it last in all 5 head-to-head prompts, 3 of them with explicit "avoid" language, and its own Trustpilot score is the lowest of the four.

🥈Webafrica2NDWins 1 of 5 head-to-heads on price and flexibility, backed by the strongest public review record of the four🥇Afrihost1STThe AI's most consistent pick (4 of 5 head-to-head prompts), despite Trustpilot and HelloPeter scores as bad as Telkom's🥉MWEB3RDNever the AI's outright top pick, but consistently praised for phone support

Telkom isn't on the podium because it finished last, by a wide margin, on every test in this audit. The rank combines each ISP's Discovery and Sentiment results below, weighted equally.

Two runs give a general sense of what an agent does with a question like this, before we get into the detail.

Asked to pick exactly one best-value ISP of…