Fergie's Tech Blog

Boing Boing: Public revolt slams crappy South African monopoly DSL offering

Cory Doctorow posts over on Boing Boing:

Nearly two years ago, we posted about a group of South Africans who were using a website called MyADSL to fight back against the national South African telcoms monopoly's ridiculous version of DSL: a network with rigid traffic caps and extensive port-blocking.

Martin, one of the MyADSL organizers, reports:

MyADSL submitted a record 466 complaints to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the regulator of telecommunications and the broadcasting sectors.

ICASA has put forward quite a number of recommendation based on our complaints and 3 days of public hearings that followed this. Just read the news headlines on our homepage to see the fallout: "ICASA ADSL report causes a media stir that reaches the JSE", "Icasa plays hardball with Telkom over ADSL threat", "PRICES UNDER PRESSURE", "Telkom must stop their bully-boy tactics", etc..

Obviously Telkom is furious. The monopoly that boasted a profit of R6.8 billion stands to lose millions in revenue.

Link (Thanks, Martin!)

posted by Fergie @ 8/04/2005 07:22:00 AM