MPLS vs SD-WAN: What Still Makes Sense for SA Businesses

Every IT manager running a multi-site operation in South Africa has had this conversation. MPLS is expensive. SD-WAN promises to replace it with internet-based connectivity at a fraction of the cost. The sales pitch sounds good. The reality is more complicated.

What MPLS actually gives you

MPLS is a private network. Your traffic does not touch the public internet between sites. It gets guaranteed latency, guaranteed bandwidth, and predictable performance. For applications that need consistent quality of service, like voice or real-time database replication, MPLS still works.

The problem is the price. MPLS in South Africa has always been expensive relative to the rest of the world. A 10Mbps MPLS link between Johannesburg and Durban can cost more than a 100Mbps fibre internet connection at each site. The value proposition has eroded as internet connectivity has improved and SaaS applications have moved traffic off the private network anyway.

What SD-WAN gives you that MPLS does not

SD-WAN is not a replacement for MPLS. It is a different approach. Instead of a single private circuit, SD-WAN uses multiple internet links (fibre, LTE, 5G) and intelligently routes traffic based on application requirements. Voice traffic gets the best path. Email gets whatever is available. Failover between links is automatic.

For South African businesses, the failover piece matters more than the routing. Load shedding takes power down. Fibre gets dug up. LTE drops. SD-WAN means your site stays connected when one link fails, because the other link takes over. With MPLS, if the circuit goes down, the site is offline until the provider fixes it.

When MPLS still makes sense

Regulated industries, particularly financial services, still need MPLS for certain workloads. If your auditors require that traffic between data centres never touches the public internet, SD-WAN over internet links does not satisfy that requirement without additional encryption layers. Some organisations run a hybrid: SD-WAN for branch sites, MPLS for the core data centre link. That is a pragmatic approach.

The destination nobody talks about

Here is the thing that does not come up in vendor presentations. SD-WAN is a transition technology. It is a bridge between the MPLS world and a destination that is even simpler: pure internet.

If your business applications are SaaS (Microsoft 365, Salesforce, cloud-hosted ERP), your users do not need a private network to reach them. They need internet. If your internal apps are rewritten for internet access with proper authentication, your users can work from any location with a connection. The office becomes a glorified coffee shop with better chairs.

Security moves to the endpoint. WiFi gets client isolation. Business capabilities become SaaS offerings, either from providers or hosted in-house but accessible over internet. Users and systems live on an internet connection, not a private one. When you reach that state, the need for SD-WAN falls away too, because there is no site-to-site traffic to optimise. Every site is just an internet connection.

The practical path

Most SA businesses are not ready to jump straight to pure internet. The transitional step is SD-WAN with LTE failover, which drops MPLS costs and adds resilience. Then, as applications move to SaaS and internal apps get rewritten for internet access, the SD-WAN becomes less critical. The end state is simpler, cheaper, and more resilient than either MPLS or SD-WAN.

We design, provision, and manage connectivity for multi-site operations across South Africa. That includes fibre, LTE, 5G, MPLS where it still makes sense, and SD-WAN as the transition. Talk to us about where you are on that path and what the next step looks like.

The businesses that benefit most from this conversation are the ones with 3 or more sites and a growing reliance on cloud applications. If you have one office and everything is on-premise, this is academic. If you have five branches and half your apps are SaaS, the connectivity model you choose affects your monthly cost, your resilience, and your ability to add or remove sites without a three-month project.

Load shedding and connectivity resilience

In South Africa, connectivity resilience means planning for load shedding. When the power goes out at a branch, the router goes down, and the site is offline unless there is a backup path. MPLS does not help here — both ends of the circuit need power. SD-WAN with LTE failover keeps the site connected through the outage, routing traffic over cellular while the fibre is down.

For multi-site businesses, this is a practical advantage that matters every day. A site that stays online during load shedding keeps processing transactions, serving customers, and communicating with head office. A site that goes offline costs money every minute it is down.

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