Digital and internet apartheid by ISPs - Openserve

For many years I have reached out to service providers, including Openserve to request fibre. We are now over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic which has come with the need to work from home, studying and learning virtually too.

We also want fibre too.

We are stuck with 10Mbps ADSL, no VDSL, constrained LTE which is very expensive. Why are higher speeds that come with fibre only in suburbs or 'nonBlack' majority areas and this is cheaper than what we have?

Why are township people, the Black majority subjected to expensive data connectivity prices while suburbia (overwhelmingly not Black) has fibre which has better speeds and is cheaper? Who do they get service providers reaching out for interest but we don't? We use the internet too, a lot.

If you go outside the Umlazi eThekwini Metropolitan Polise Service station you will see a number of young people on their mobile devices, using the available Wi-Fi. During exams times you will see learners with their books, laptops, phone and tablets studying while using WiFi.

It's simply can't be that the area whose people earn the least has worse service, worse speeds at a higher price and you have done nothing to remedy the situation. This is highly prejudicial and the fact that townships are almost exclusively Black, suburbs being mostly white, I dare say it is tantamount to being a form of ****** that this exist.

We can barely work from home, which means we are at high risk of contracting Covid-19 as we travel further to work places. Our kids have a harder time learning remotely, there is low uptake and ability to start home based digital businesses.

The people who are advantaged are in suburbs.

How can this be in an African country that Africans are disadvanted first and always as a matter of course. Internet services are new, post 1994 but the service is so discriminatory it is digital apartheid.