Surfing simply with the hotshot behind the hotspots.

Byline: Dave Marrs

Surfing simply with the hotshot behind the hotspots Young Cape-based internet entrepreneur Henk Kleynhans is the man putting laptops in SA's coffee shops, writes TELKOM'S monopoly over landline communications may officially be over, but its continued control of the last mile of copper leading to most customers' homes will remain a stumbling block to affordable internet access in SA for some time to come. That means even the prospect of a huge increase in the amount of available international bandwidth in the coming few years, as various new undersea fibre-optic cables are linked up to an upgraded national network, does not necessarily mean that every home in the country will have instant access to cheap and fast internet services. For existing home internet users that is an annoyance, and for the poor it is one of many bricks in the wall that constitutes the digital divide. But for Cape-based internet entrepreneur Henk Kleynhans it is a virtual guarantee that the company he founded in 2004 will have a large pool of potential customers for the foreseeable future. …