Archive for the ‘telecoms’ tag

Truth hurts

The ex-Minister of Telecommunications in South Africa died last week.

Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, better known as Poison Ivy, was the topic of a few of my rants in the past.

She was really good at stuffing things up, and then starting legal procedures against anyone who tried to fix it. I think she’s the first true example of the “If it aint fixed, don’t fix it, sleep instead” mindset.

Government released their own tribute to her, which ignores all her failings.

So it was left to some more objective people to come up with a fitting tribute.

South Africa’s Government pillaged South Africa’s Economy

Tell us something we didn’t know?
Perhaps the rest of the world is finally waking up to what has been happening in South Africa for far too long.
Article

Civil Disobedience

I like the sound of that… Civil Disobedience.

Its not quite what the Jawug guys were going for, but it seems to describe it quite well.

Just a bunch of guys, building their own telecommunication network for fun. They’re not hurting anyone, they’re not causing any trouble, and they’re not stealing from anyone.

The Jawug network has grown alot since I left South Africa, and I’m incredibly proud of what its been up to in the past year.
Now, there’s a Wug.za.net, which covers the whole of South Africa, and even Namibia!

Keep it up guys!

What is the South African Government thinking?

Okay… Someone explain to me what the rationale behind this latest idea is?

Some parliment seat warmers have proposed to make all visitors to the country register with the government (passport in hand) before being allowed access to the Cellular networks to make calls, even if they have a roaming agreement in place with their home provider.

Where’s the logic in that?
Hello, welcome to the World Cup. No you wont be able to make any phonecalls, until you (and thousands of other visitors) have popped in to register.

Next, they’ll be proposing a R308 million (pronounced R411 million), to look after registrations.

Whats wrong… is passport control not enough?

Ivy’s Budget Speech

Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri managed to stay awake long enough to present a speech to parliment today.

She addressed issues such as access to the Sat-3 submarine cable, LLU and Telecoms Licence conversions.

Duncan McLoed has selected a few of the non-waffle bits of the speech, which pretty much sums it all up.

Link to full transcript is available on the FMTech Blog

Could it be?

Could it really be? Neotel actually doing something constructive?

Apparently, they’re trying.

Jump starting the light at the end of the high priced telecoms tunnel?