BUILDING INTERNET BIT BY BIT

How did you start?

After matric, I worked as a part-time call centre consultant while studying Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. There I got to learn networking engineering, how to make 2 devices connect and how the internet is formed. After varsity, I joined Cell C doing sales and marketing going from different townships trying to get the brand out there. I would go on a Cell C bus doing card activations and selling airtime. I also worked for Vodacom, and Spark ATMs. That’s when I learned that companies that are proving ICT were providing for suburbs and as a young person from Khayelitsha and Inyanga, I saw a gap.

What sets your brand apart from others?

Our services give people the experience of being in another place while still within the same township. Proving township entrepreneurs with Fibre and landlines helps them connect with a much larger audience. Creating domain registration for them to get a website with a pre-built e-commerce platform so they can operate online. In the company, we prioritise every employee’s health, and working 9-5 feels like mental slavery. We don’t employ them to take up their time. I hope to see it as a business partnership, they are taking their time and skills and putting them into Sky Internet. They can work from anywhere with our internet-based systems, we have a workflow monitoring tool that can track work performance.

What are some of the challenges you faced when you first started?

Even though I decided to start an internet service providing company back in 2016. Sky Internet was registered in 2019. As an employee myself I couldn’t find time to have necessary meetings. The NYDA for instance, they have an entrepreneurial program course that has Monday – Friday classes and I could not take time off work. Meaning I missed that business funding opportunity.

How big is Sky Internet’s coverage?

We can provide services on open network nationally. However, we’re still trying to grow a decent amount of subscribers in Cape Town we partnered with Opentel and Vuma in providing fibre in townships like Langa, Nyanga, and Khayelitsha we provide internet services using their open fibre network. In places like Khayelitsha with parts of it being squatter camps, we can’t reach with fibre as it requires an underground connectivity process so we provide wireless coverage.