The Journey Starts Here

Last December I blogged about the announcement of South Africa's SNO, or, the long-awaited challenger to Telkom's landline monopoly.

They launched today: introducing Neotel - "the first national infrastructure-based competitor in the fixed line telecoms sector in South Africa". Via My Broadband:

Neotel kicks off its offerings with wholesale international services. Neotel will most likely expand its operations early next year with voice and broadband offerings to corporate and residential customers.

Neotel aims to offer a variety of services in the fixed line telecoms environment, providing Telkom with its first real competition in this arena.

It is expected that Neotel will capture between 10% and 15% market share from Telkom in its first year of operations.

More here: SNO to launch operations today, or follow news updates via Google News South Africa.

Also be sure to get involved in the Telecoms Action Group - who are campaigning "to place an advert in one of the country's big newspapers to tell Telkom exactly what we think of their service and demand a speedy and competitive alternative. [...] The advert will be similar to the Spread Firefox Advert Campaign, which took out a double-page spread in the New York Times (see PDF)".

UPDATE:
SNO launches services as Neotel (My Broadband)
New S.Africa fixed-line operator to spend billions (Reuters)
Telkom rival officially launched (Finance24)