The incredible story behind Afrihost

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Jamie McKane

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The incredible story behind Afrihost

Afrihost is one of South Africa’s largest independent Internet service providers and is a household name in the broadband and hosting market.

With high-end offices in Sandton and a valuation of R2.5 billion, it is easy to think it was started with a lot of funding and the backing of a large corporate. This was not the case.
 
As far as 'Maverick' companies go in SA, Afrihost definitely qualifies as one.

Well done, Gian!

You've come a long way.

By the way, thanks for the memory of the Frontpage book.

Read the same one during '96 when we had to explain to potential customers what a website is and what it can do for them. :laugh:
 
The internet was a lot more exciting in the early days. Now everything has been done and it's boring. It seems everyone has become lazy since fibre and are leaving it to the corporates who are only interested in fleecing us and using us as commodities. I know Afrihost is no longer a small company but I'm waiting for the next innovative person to come along and offer 10Mbps fibre for R200 to shake up the market.
 
Swa said:
The internet was a lot more exciting in the early days. Now everything has been done and it's boring. It seems everyone has become lazy since fibre and are leaving it to the corporates who are only interested in fleecing us and using us as commodities. I know Afrihost is no longer a small company but I'm waiting for the next innovative person to come along and offer 10Mbps fibre for R200 to shake up the market.
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That will just never happen. Specially not if vumatel and Openserve determine wholesale prices. But I agree, Fibre just became expensive these day. They know we don't have any alternatives as things are.
 
Is Afrihost using the SACS cable for Western international traffic ? (Brazil, USA).
 
coolito said:
That will just never happen. Specially not if vumatel and Openserve determine wholesale prices. But I agree, Fibre just became expensive these day. They know we don't have any alternatives as things are.
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That's the problem, everyone relies on the wholesale networks instead of ISPs provisioning for themselves like they did with adsl.
 
I remember when they introduced the R29/gb offering, those were exciting times in the ZA internet space. (IIRC this was after an ISP called 'Digichilli' tried to introduce a cheap uncapped offering and failed?).

Gian was always extremely helpful and pleasant back then.

Left SA back in 2012, when I was on a 4Mbps Uncpped package, I trust things are a lot better now!
 
Rosaudio said:
I remember when they introduced the R29/gb offering, those were exciting times in the ZA internet space. (IIRC this was after an ISP called 'Digichilli' tried to introduce a cheap uncapped offering and failed?).

Gian was always extremely helpful and pleasant back then.

Left SA back in 2012, when I was on a 4Mbps Uncpped package, I trust things are a lot better now!
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To think this was when mobile was R500/GB. I would have given anything to be able to pay R29/GB. Now my R10/GB Cell C looks expensive.
 
Ah, the yearly puff piece of how amazing and incredible Afrihost is to help sponsor those Fibre/ADSL/5G connections mybroadband has ;)

Was wondering when it would pop up
 
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