Paul Jacobson

Category: Telecoms

  • My experiences with a Nokia N900

    You can find my N900 pseudo-review post right here but feel free to continue reading and read my initial thoughts too. I picked up a Nokia N900 yesterday to test for a couple weeks. I’ve been looking forward to using one of these devices for a while now and what I saw at the recent…

  • DSL providers get a bloody nose from Afrihost

    News of Afrihost’s special offer has spread like wildfire and for good reason. Afrihost is offering ADSL connectivity for a low R29 per GB which is probably the lowest price in South Africa at the moment. I am currently an Axxess customer and I just called Axxess to find out if they have any price…

  • Thoughts about the Seacom cable: what it isn't and what it can be

    In a way our trip to Mtunzini to visit the Seacom landing station on 28 May 2009 was a great analogy for the Seacom cable’s impact on South Africa’s degree of connectivity to the Internet. It took us about 2 hours to fly from Johannesburg to Durban and back again and about double that amount…

  • First the work and then nothing …

    I haven’t posted much the last few days and I was going to do some serious blogging yesterday afternoon to make up for it only to discover than some nitwit had cut my line completely (not even a dial tone). I called Telkom who has sent out a message to a technician who will hopefully…

  • DoC’s lip service to urgency

    It seems our communications minister has a very strange concept of urgency. Hitting the wire* has a post that reveals that the minister is really just paying lip service to her stated goal of reducing telecommunications costs in South Africa and unbundling the local loop (the connection from the network to each home/business, also referred…

  • Hollard’s call centre that doesn’t really handle calls

    My wife has a fascinating and highly entertaining story about her experiences with Hollard after I was involved in an accident in her car recently. I don’t want to steal her thunder (it is a really entertaining story) but this is the highlight for me: “Its a call centre and as such its very difficult…

  • “Government monopolies in telecom will always destroy the value of the Internet”

    Gregor just published a video interview with Prof Larry Lessig where Lessig comments on certain cultural issues and the very controversial telecoms policy our government is pursuing. One quote stands out for me and that is the following: … Government monopolies in telecom will always destroy the value of the Internet … And this was…

  • “Telkom doesn’t have customers … it has hostages”

    This video posted on Zoopy adds to the many voices speak out against Telkom. The video makes a good point: our apathy only benefits Telkom. The problem, of course, is that until Neotel launches consumer services, there is no real alternative to Telkom. Sure there are mobile devices and mobile data is cheaper than before…