In the beginning of October we awoke to the kind of disconnect that generally only happens when mountain weather and Eskom disagrees.
The longest standing relationship in Hogsback, was officially on the rocks. No notice, no Dear John letter, no major fight or break-up, Telkom just packed their bags and left. Some of you hop, skipped and jumped through all five stages of grief; packed away your modems and shacked up with someone new, in record time… I’m not judging; I mean there’s very few people quite as resilient as Hogsbackians. For some of us… no matter how resilient, Telkom was our ONLY option. If you have no LTE signal on your property, no line of sight to Tor Doone and then no Telkom line; this break-up hit really hard.
When corporate bureaucracy cuts off a mountain village, one rarely expects a knight in shining armour to come wearing a corporate badge. Yet, that is precisely what happened when The Hogsback Times sent a formal request for a media statement regarding the abrupt decommissioning of our local exchange and the disconnection of our ADSL accounts.
We asked for regulatory accountability, billing freezes and migration options as well as time frames. Essentially all I wanted was for these corporates to realize the impact and answer for themselves.
What we got instead was Ernst Visagie.
HBT’s request for guilt admission, landed squarely on the desk of Ernst at Openserve’s Build Centre of Excellence. Our media inquiry could have easily ended up in the standard corporate queue for a canned public relations response. In fact, Zama Ndaba from Telkom acknowledged receipt of our email 8 days after we sent it. No response, just acknowledgement of receipt. The same goes for Icasa. Followed by radio silence.
Ernst bypassed the usual corporate lip service and got straight to work. Within hours of reading about our isolated mountain community, our local businesses, our police station and our elderly residents suddenly left without a lifeline…he made a decision that took us all by surprise (most of all me), he began personally reinstating the exchange to restore our services.
What followed over the course of the week was a masterclass in dedication. While we braced for a Telkom-less future of disconnect, Ernst Visagie and Vusi Maseko was actively auditing service numbers, troubleshooting line configurations and coordinating technical updates on their end. When Paul reconnected to the internet for the first time in weeks, the relief felt across the village was immediate. There was HOPE! Line by line, subscriber by subscriber, Ernst and his team systematically brought our connectivity back from the dead.
Ernst & Vusi didn’t just answer a media statement query; they listened to a community in distress and took action when it mattered most. This month, our Honorary Local is Ernst Visagie; for stepping out of the bureaucratic bullshit, for taking ownership and for bringing Hogsback back online. Thank you for reminding us that behind the business of feasible networks, there are still individuals who genuinely care.
… Now my fellow Hogsbackians…. I know, as a community; we have infrastructure-related-trust issues and we’re cautious with our excitement and our appreciation. So who knows how long it will last, what the accounts department and field techs will say and what the future of this relationship looks like. So let’s just be grateful please…every morning, when you see those green modem lights all on and active, use the ultrasonic capabilities of our old copper lines to send a little gratitude into the world.