If I remember correctly our first Internet connection from our home in Hayfield, Pietermaritzburg was by means of a 300 bps acoustic couple modem that allowed us to dial into a server running in the Computer Science Department on the Pietermaritzburg Campus of the then University of Natal. I those early days we also used Telkom\'s Beltel service to connect to First National Bank.

Our first Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) connection was also through Telkom, and we were connected around 2003. Telkom was also the Internet Service Provider (ISP). We stayed with Telkom until one of the members of the household thought a shift to MWeb would be a good idea. I was not so keen and the compromise saw us retain the Telkom ADSL line and switch to MWeb as the ISP. If there was an improvement, it was not noticeable.

The next change occurred when the same member of the household thought that switch to Afrihost as our ISP would be a good idea. Again, if there was an improvement, it was not noticeable. The next switch came when Telkom started to seriously fall over and that saw us make a radical change in terms of a switch to Afrihost's Rain wireless service as supplied by Vodacom. This worked quite well until a couple of months ago when Vodacom seem to falter in our area. This saw us not only loose our Internet connection intermittently and at times for protracted periods, we would also loose our cell Vodacom phone signal. None of these failures was ever recorded publicly and there has never been any apologies. In terms of this experience, Vodacom made visiting Home Affairs to renew a passport a real pleasure.

Our most recent switch has been to Cell C as the wireless provider and so far, so good.