Telecom Policy «Many Possibilities

Why WiFi in Africa?

By Steve Song, on January 9th, 2009

Imagine an alternative history. Imagine that in 1995, when Microsoft launched their walled-garden MSN service, which they fully expected would, for all intents and purposes, put the Internet out of business, imagine that they succeeded.

So today when you connected to the network, you connected to MSN’s custom portal which showed you all the sites that [...]

Another small victory for common sense

By Steve Song, on October 31st, 2008

Minister Matsepe-Casaburri courtesy kjd

Here in South Africa, Justice Norman Davis has denied Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburi’s request to appeal the Altech ruling. This once again opens the doors to competition in the telecoms sector in South Africa. The Minister can still appeal to the Supreme Court but let us hope that she takes good advice [...]

SA Telecoms Cool Wall

By Steve Song, on September 2nd, 2008

Inspired by Rudoph Van Den Burg’s riff on Jeremy Clarkson’s TopGear Cool Wall I thought a Cool Wall for the South African telecommunications and Internet community might be fun to do. For those who haven’t seen it, the TopGear Cool Wall ranks automobile coolness on a scale ranging from SubZero to Cool to UnCool [...]