the corner office

In South Africa, you used to have a single choice for broadband: you got Telkom ADSL and complained bitterly about it. Then Sentech and later iBurst came along and you could choose to use wireless broadband instead. You'd chat to some mates, read some posts on the usual forums and know that you could more or less make an informed choice, and be happy with the result.

Here, it's totally different. The array of choices is near overwhelming. Even the crappiest service is likely to be a whole lot better than Telskum's offerings, but that's scant help when you're trying to get the best bang for your buck.

It's wonderful to see what you can get with some real competition, but the competition also leads to some obfuscation. Contract-free ISPs still charge you a 'cancellation fee' if you cancel within a certain time period. Unlimited ADSL packages have 'fair use policies' which, if you dig through enough fine print, limit you to 20GB or 40GB or 60GB or whatever. Now, that's an insane amount of data for someone who's used to squeezing the most out of 3GB a month, but still: I'd like to find an ISP where I read their blurbs and don't feel like I'm being lied to.