By Kathy Gibson – Back in the early 1990s, the world was just starting to go online, and a spirit of innovation and sense of possibility was the order of the day.
Anthony Gerada, one of the pioneers of the Internet market in South Africa, shares some memories of what it was like creating a new industry.
“What an era we lived through,” he says. “We saw it coming although, looking back at it now, we had no idea of what it would be – but we knew it would be important.”
In the early days of the Internet, the World Wide Web wasn’t yet mainstream and information was exchanged via videotext services like Beltel and Minitel. Gerada remembers buying a 100-page block on Beltel to create the pages for his company Digitec, where people could dial in to download files.
“There were also forums where people could chat. There was nothing else like it.”
Gerada also brought out the first publicly available email in the country. “At that stage you could get an email address through Uninet if you were an engineering student, but as a member of the public you could only get one through us, through our bulletin board service (BBS).
“I believe we were the first public email in South Africa, and had a dial-up exchange running it in the background.”
Digitec’s service was delivered via three telephone lines, which soon increased to 10 lines. “Telkom shook their heads at that: they simply didn’t understand what we needed 10 lines for.
“Then, in the early 1990s, I applied to Telkom for 30 lines. We were operating from my home in Nortcliff – I had built an outside room for that purpose, all wired up and caged against lightning – and Telkom really hadn’t planned for that kind of usage at all. Their planning was for one telephone line per property, maybe a fax line.
“So, when I asked for 30 lines, they decided to full a fibre optic cable from the Aasvoelkop exchange, linked directly to my home. We must have been the first house in South Africa that had fibre optics and a mini exchange, which was about the size of a small fridge.
“This gave us the amplitude to broaden our offierings,” Gerada adds. “There was still the BBS, with about 30 nodes. Then we started offering leased lines to companies and some direct connections that had nothing to do with the BBS. And, parallel to that, we ran a proper Internet connection.
“Internet customers dialled in via 19,2kbps modems through a point-to-point connection. From there you go find an SMTP server and offload email.”
There were no multi-tasking operating systems in those days – even those advertised as multi-tasking didn’t really do the job, according to Gerada. “So we had to have one computer per telephone node – 30 lines meant 30 computers, 30 modems and 30 screens.
The PiX Internet service was run in parallel to the BBS, mostly through dial-up lines as well. “In fact, we were the biggest player in dial-up Internet at one stage,” Gerada remembers.
At that time, the South African Posts and Telecommunications (SAPT) was mandated by law as the only organisation allowed to carry third-party mail. “If you were going to America and I gave you a letter to pass on to my friend, you were technically breaking the law because that was under the aegis of the Post Office.
“So they tried to shut us down because we were technically carrying third-party mail. The local trade newspaper Computing SA helped us in highlighting the issue and getting it resolved.
“Co-incidentally, every Friday our lines used to go down all weekend – I believe that was part of trying to shut us down. I got a lot of grey hair because of Telkom, but I believe the Internet caught them completely unawares.”
In fact, it caught everyone unawares, Gerada says. “We were just a bunch of youngsters who hooked up at the right time, in the right place. It didn’t really take much to figure out that this was something we should run with. We saw the opportunity and climbed into it, boots and all.”
“I remember it was still so simple,” Gerada adds. “What held it back was that the speed wasn’t there. We didn’t have much bandwidth and the new graphical user interfaces (GUIs) made it even slower.”
In terms of infrastructure, the disk space used by the BBS was all of 1Gb, he adds. With the Internet service, the largest of the disk drives was 600Mb. “If you downloaded a 200kb file, it would take 10 minutes. We used to spend a lot of time on those dial-up lines.”
But the inefficiencies led to innovation, he points out. “My brother lived in Colesberg and, to phone him, you would call the exchange and the operator would patch you through. When he first got a modem, the operator would try to listen in on his calls, which was disastrous. But we got it to work.”
Gerada’s Digitec business was already established when he set up PiX, supplying laptops and solutions, so he was able to fund the new move into the Internet.
“But a lot of the other players were hobbyists, working from home, and would look after their BBS after work.”
Once the Internet started taking off commercially, Gerada launched the PiX service, with a starter bundle and email address. “You could pay R8.00 and get a pixie email address and a disk that you used to install your email and a web browser.”
PiX and a Pretoria-based ISP were later bought by MWeb to become the foundation of one of the country’s largest ISPs.
Gerada has fond memories of those days. “There is nothing I regret,” he says. “The BBS community was just that – a community. We used to have get-together parties and got to know people face to face. I am still friends with many of our users from back then.
“I think of those days very fondly. It was something new and exciting – we were bright-eyed and so happy about what was happening. It was at the forefront of innovation, at the bleeding edge.”