The Day of Reckoning for Telkom approaches fast
Posted on October 29th, 2009 by Richard Catto 892 views
For more than a decade now, South African consumers and business people, and indeed the whole of South Africa have been effectively sucked dry by the parasite we know as Telkom. And now, finally, it seems they are going to have to pay for their abuse of South Africa.
If there is one company which has most held back the economic development of South Africa, it is Telkom. It is the single most hated organisation in South Africa. Telkom has ruined individuals and businesses. It has held South Africa back from developing the cheap telecommunications infrastructure that our country desperately needs to compete in the Internet powered global market. It has contributed to the flight of hugely successful South African business people who realised that they could never realise their dreams in a country so crippled by Telkom. People like Mark Shuttleworth, Vinny Lingham could not soar to the heights they have achieved in a country where Internet bandwidth is non-existent, where it is sold at hugely inflated prices and where the development of additional infrastructure is hamstrung.
Telkom is the dog that has financially depleted the bank accounts of myriads of consumers and businesses, artificially driving up prices for all sorts of things across the board. Telkom has done its level best to impoverish South Africans at every level of society. They are an absolutely despicable evil empire and they must now kneel before the sword that lops off their head.
It is not good enough for Telkom to pay the proposed R3-4 billion fine. All its directors must be imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives without the possibility of parole. We must sink these bastards into the deepest darkest black hole and deny them the ability to ever see a single green leaf or the naked sky again. We must strip from them all their assets, including their pension funds. We must impose upon them and their families the poverty they imposed on the rest of us. Every single asset of Telkom must be sold and the money raised given back to every Telkom account holder for the last 10 years pro-rata. Every person owing Telkom a cent, must be forgiven in full their debt.
It is not possible for us to completely undo the harm that Telkom has done to South Africa over the last decade, but we must try. We must purge this country of their evil, and we must make the severest example of them, lest any other South African monopoly is tempted to follow in their footsteps.
FURTHER READING:
Telkom faces multibillion-rand fine for ‘abusing dominance’
Telkom faces record fine for malpractices
New threat of billions in fines for Telkom
Tags: Telkom
Filed under Telkom | No Comments »
Telkom premium combo ADSL wireless router security hole
Posted on June 27th, 2007 by Richard Catto 19,405 views
Cape Town news has discovered a security hole in Telkom’s premium combo DSL router that allows hackers to obtain a DSL account’s username and password.
This information is then used to gain Internet access, using the DSL account, and deprives victims of bandwidth they have paid for.
The premium combo DSL router has a Remote Acess feature which is disabled by default. However, this security measure is easily defeated by connecting to the router via the alternative port number.
To protect yourself from this security hole, please ensure that your router’s firewall is turned on and that your admin password has been changed to something non-trivial.
Ultimately, Telkom, is liable, I believe, for this security hole which has been widely exploited already to deny people use of the bandwidth they are paying exorbitantly for.
People who have had their bandwidth stolen in this manner, may contact me if they are interested in joining a legal suit against Telkom.
Despite my efforts to get Telkom to reinstate my bandwidth, they refuse to respond to my correspondence.
Filed under DSL, DSL secuity hole, Telkom, Telkom ADSL, bandwidth cap, bandwidth theft, premium combo router | 55 Comments »
SA free bandwidth campaign launched
Posted on May 31st, 2007 by Richard Catto 2,807 views
These people are spreading a message (by email) that is very dangerous.
They are attempting to persuade people to download some software that they have allegedly written that will do a “network test” of the local South African network.
They say that their software is open source and that the source code will be available for download from their site, along with a self installing program. Big deal. If you install their self installing program, you don’t know whether that program is actually the result of compiling the supplied source code.
What their program is supposed to do is access a list of local sites for about 5 minutes and then uninstall itself.
Fact is, they’re asking you to trust them that all the claims they make are true.
What they describe sounds to me like a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attack.
Even if they have the best intentions, their “network test” program could quite easily wreak havoc.
Do you really want to risk being part of taking down South Africa’s network?
I think this is madness!
Cool link: Brilliant Bru & Boegie cartoon strip of this story
Filed under DDOS, June 30 2007, SA free bandwidth campaign, Scam, bandwidth cap, bandwidth test, network test | 12 Comments »
