The Rise of UrbanX: From a Dad’s Promise to a Top Gaming ISP

Most businesses start with a complicated business plan. UrbanX started with a simple question from two frustrated gamers to their dad: "Why is our ping so high?"

If you are a gamer in South Africa, you know the pain. You pay for a fast fibre line, but the moment you jump into a competitive match, the connection struggles more often than not. You rubber-band across the map, shots don't register, and when you call your ISP, they read from a script and tell you to reboot your router.

Our founders, Vaughan Gerson and Sean van Niekerk, experienced this firsthand. Vaughan's sons were competitive gamers who eventually challenged him. They asked, "Dad, why don't you start a fibre business so we can actually play?"

It sounded like a crazy idea, but the infrastructure was already there through our enterprise network, FirstNet fibre to the business, a part of the First Technology Group. The goal changed from just "selling internet" to fixing the one thing that drives gamers insane: latency.

"Dad, Why Is the Ping So High?"

We originally toyed with the name UrbanConnect, which was fibre to the home. The plan was simple: fibre for everyone. But as we dug into the data, we realized that "everyone" didn't have the same problems. A person sending emails doesn't notice a 20ms jitter spike. A CS2 or Valorant player definitely does.

So, we pivoted. UrbanConnect gave birth UrbanX, fibre to the gamer - and thus we decided to build a network specifically for gamers!

The timing was critical. We launched right as the Covid-19 lockdowns hit. Everyone was stuck at home, and gaming was the only escape. In two years, we went from 200 gamers to over 5,000+. It wasn't just marketing; it was word of mouth. Gamers started telling their squads, "Hey, my ping is actually stable on this network - not knowing they’d now have no excuse to have bad plays in game.

The Tech: Chasing Lower Latency

Talking about "fast speeds" is easy. Fixing routing issues is the hard work that most ISPs avoid.

In the early days, if a game server was hosted in Singapore, South African gamers saw pings of around 440ms. It was unplayable. Instead of accepting this as "normal," our network team went to work on our peering relationships.

We adjusted our upstream partners and cut out the "man in the middle" hops. Today, that same path to Singapore sits around 115ms. That is the difference between winning a duel and being extremely upset for the rest of the night.

We also stopped hiding our network performance. Most ISPs don't want you to see what's happening under the hood. We built a Looking Glass tool right on our site so you can ping from our network to any IP address in real time. We believe in transparency - so if there is an issue, we want you to see it so we can fix it and improve upon it.

Massive Backbone Upgrades

It’s not just about ping; it’s about capacity. We have upgraded our core network significantly since launch. We moved from a 10GB backbone to now supporting over 100GB switching.

We also monitor our capacity closely. When a link reaches 60% utilization, we start planning upgrades. We never let our network go above 80% capacity. This ensures that when a new game update drops or a tournament starts, your line doesn't choke.

If you are ready to upgrade your line speed, we’ve partnered with fibre providers like Octotel to launch 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps packages. You can check out our latest fibre packages.

Support That Speaks "Gamer"

The biggest pain point we wanted to fix was support. There is nothing worse than explaining packet loss to a call center agent who doesn't know what you are talking about or the frustrations that come with that experience.

At UrbanX, we had to transition our team from enterprise support to home gamer support. We hired hard working people who understand the technology and what it means to be a gamer. When you talk to us, you aren't talking to a robot. You’re talking to someone who games themselves. For Gamers, by Gamers.

We also developed our own troubleshooting app. Instead of spending 20 minutes on the phone trying to explain a fault, our clients can download this support app. It runs the necessary line tests for you and shares the feedback directly with our team. It makes debugging faster and gets you back in the game sooner.

Hosting the Action Locally

To guarantee the best performance, we often take matters into our own hands. We host high-performance private servers for titles like Minecraft, Rust, Valheim, 7 Days to Die and many more popular titles!

By keeping the server on our local network, we cut the distance your data has to travel effectively to zero.

Our servers are currently still in “Beta mode” - which means they’re free to use and test!

Want to join a low-latency world? View our Game Servers list.

The Future: Automation with a Human Touch

We’ve come a long way from 200 users and a dad trying to stop his kids from complaining about lag. But the mission hasn't changed - to bring serious competitive gaming fibre to the home.

Looking ahead to the next 12–24 months, we are focusing on using AI to automate fault detection. We want to identify and fix line issues before you even notice them. However, we are committed to keeping the human element. You will always be able to talk to a real person who cares about your connection.

The network is growing, and the technology is evolving, but our rule remains the same: The gamer comes first.

Don’t Just Take Our Word For It We built this network for transparency. If you want to see exactly how we perform before you switch, use our Looking Glass tool to test your ping against our network right now.

Already convinced? Join the 5,000+ South African gamers who finally found a home. Switch to UrbanX Today