Activists strike back
Technology journalist Richard Frank and his business partner Alastair Otter last year asked for donations to collect R50000 to pay for an ad in the Mail & Guardian They reached their target in a matter of days. The ad is scheduled to appear on Friday (January 19).
With the cash left over they are planning to place ads in a daily tabloid and on radio. The normally mild-mannered Frank started the advertising campaign after he lost his cool when Telkom took more than three months to move his high speed ADSL data line to a new address.
The frustration of this delay led him to write a blog (an online journal) titled “Telkom is killing our business”. The positive public reaction sparked Frank and Otter to form the Telecoms Action Group (TAG) to lobby for change in the telecommunications industry.
“We want to put telecoms on the national agenda. We want to make it an election issue,” says Frank.
TAG is just one of several telecom lobby groups to pop up over the past few years. The MyADSL Internet forum, started by Rudolph Muller, has more than 10000 members.
These activists are starting to get noticed. Muller has made numerous presentations at Icasa hearings. He and Debbie Love, who heads the activist site Antitrust.co.za, were unsuccessfully nominated as Icasa councillors last year.
The telecom activists have their critics. Icasa chairman Paris Mashile says they tend to lobby only on sophisticated services, which only a few people can afford, rather than campaigning for broadening telecom services.
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