Before emigrating to the U.S. and becoming a venture capitalist, David Frankel played a pivotal role in building South Africa’s Internet service provider industry — and fought to keep it out of Telkom’s monopolistic grip.
Frankel was one of five friends who started The Internet Solution, a company credited with commercialising Internet access in South Africa and helping to make the web more widely available.
After school, Frankel was admitted to the University of the Witwatersrand and graduated with a BSc in Electrical Engineering in 1992. Apteker and Frankel joined Internet Solutions shortly after and helped establish one of South Africa’s first commercial Internet service providers just as the World Wide Web was taking off.David Frankel reminiscing with the rest of the Internet Solutions Mafia
Ispa was founded to combat the threat posed by Telkom’s entry into the Internet service provider market as the sole provider of public switched telephony infrastructure in South Africa. Telkom said its state-sanctioned monopoly over voice services should extend to the Internet. It argued that allowing private companies to offer Internet services would undermine its ability to supply access to underserved communities.
It disputed Telkom’s argument and told Satra that the company would actually be under no obligation to roll out universal Internet access, despite its claims. Telkom immediately challenged the ruling in court, but regulatory and market developments ultimately rendered the issue moot. He had deferred his admission to Harvard twice since 1993 and decided to finally continue his studies, graduating in 2003.
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