Vuma Johannesburg Contact Details

Vuma publishes no Johannesburg office and no Johannesburg number. More importantly, for most problems Vuma is not who you should be phoning at all — and it says so itself on its own contact page.

The one number Vuma publishes

• Customer Care Support: 010 746 8862
• Described by Vuma as being for technical assistance or to report an outage in your area
• A Network Status page on vumatel.co.za shows current outages

Vuma is the network, not your ISP

This is the distinction that decides who can actually help you. Vuma builds and runs the fibre in the ground and to your house. It does not sell you an internet account. Your Internet Service Provider — whoever bills you each month — sells the service, holds your account and is the party you have a contract with. Vuma’s own contact page carries a section headed Need some internet help? that says plainly: contact your Internet Service Provider with any issues you are experiencing.

• Slow speeds, a bill, a package change, a router, a new installation date — your ISP. Vuma cannot see your account.
• A physically broken line, a dug-up cable, a fault your ISP has escalated — that is the network, and the 010 number is right.
• An area outage — check Network Status first, because the answer is usually already there.

An ISP that tells you to phone Vuma yourself is usually avoiding logging the fault. Ask them for the escalation reference they have opened with the network operator, and keep it.

The Johannesburg speed test server

Vuma runs three speed test servers and one of them is in Johannesburg. Use the Johannesburg one if you are on the Reef, because testing against a Durban or Cape Town server adds distance that shows up as latency and makes a healthy line look worse than it is. Run the test on a cable to the router rather than over WiFi — a slow WiFi result is very often a WiFi problem and not a fibre one, and that is the single most common reason a support call goes nowhere.

Before you report a fault

• Note whether the light on the fibre box (the ONT) is on, and what colour it is. It is the first thing you will be asked.
• Restart the router once, and note whether anything changed.
• Check Network Status for your area.
• Then phone your ISP, and give them the ONT light state and the speed test result.

Digging, damage and installations

Vuma trenches through suburbs and estates, and the questions that follow — a verge dug up, a wall or driveway damaged, an installation appointment, permission to run fibre into a complex — are network matters rather than ISP ones. Vuma publishes a National Installation Standard and a Code of Conduct with complaints procedures as documents on its site; if a contractor’s work is the problem, cite those and take it up on the 010 number.

If it is not resolved

• Keep the fault reference from your ISP and the date each call was made.
• An unresolved telecommunications complaint can be taken to ICASA, the industry regulator.
• A billing or contract dispute is with your ISP, not with Vuma, and can go to the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud where the ISP is a participant.