OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 6.30pm
M-WEB, South Africa’s largest Internet Service Provider in the dial-up market, will take over the dial-up subcriber base of NetActive, which will now concentrate on e-commerce.
This is M-Web’s third such deal in a month — the company obtained the subscriber bases of Club Internet and Cyberhost in December. NetActive, however, is a much bigger player, the largest of the “second tier” service providers.
The latest deal takes M-Web, engaged in a bitter struggle with Vodacom’s World Online service, to over the 200000 subscriber mark.
NetActive chief executive Lawrence Brink said the company’s vision was to be a premier provider of communication and e-commerce enablement services to the global internet market, and that running a subscriber base was no longer part of the company’s plans.